WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, UCL AL #341 - Culture, Read: Anne Crignon, "A beautiful women's strike, the Penn Sardins, Douarnenez, 1924" (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The Penn Sardins, first names... first names only. Forgotten,

depersonalized, as workers and as women. Lives of women between house
and factory; Factory girls: Wives of sailors, war or sea widows, single
women, often mothers of several children, everything depended on them.
Laborious lives of workers, hard lives of women! ---- The Penn Sardins,
first names... first names only.[1]Forgotten, depersonalized, as workers
and as women. Lives of women between house and factory; Factory girls:
Wives of sailors, war or sea widows, single women, often mothers of
several children, everything depended on them. Laborious lives of
workers, hard lives of women! They salted the sardines, put them in
small baskets and weighed them... A rudimentary technique which was
improved, to the great dismay of the workers.

Douarnenez, thanks to the technique known as the press then the pile,
could keep the sardines for several months. The caught fish, landed,
were washed in the sea, placed in a pile in a barrel: one layer of fish,
one of salt. The salt partly melted and the sardine was bathed in brine,
where it was left to stay. With canning[2], the press was abandoned.
Between oil, brine and sardine guts, odors which permeated the body and
clothes. Douarnenez became the first sardine port in France. The whole
town lived on sardines. Some more richly than others; some more modestly
than others.

In 1924, canneries abounded, twenty-two, plus a can factory, 2,000
workers, 5,000 fishermen. Under the impetus of Nantes capitalism,
stemming in part from the slave trade, a new class of industrialists
settled in Douarnenez. Two worlds faced each other. The difficult living
conditions of the Penn Sardins worsened. Canning factory workers were
the least paid in France. Labor legislation? Its non-compliance was
common usage.

Listen to the sound of their hooves
In 1905[3]a first strike for wages lasted several months and the workers
obtained wages per hour and not per thousand hollowed and headed
sardines. The workers learned the notions of class solidarity and were
paid 0.80 francs per hour. Meager poverty wages, source of the conflict
of 1924. From ten years old, sometimes eight, these Penn Sardinians
worked in the cannery, working day and night, sometimes finishing very
late, starting again very early, sometimes fifteen hours, with low
income . They sometimes lasted beyond seventy years.

Here are the factory workers
This exemplary struggle of 1924 was a victorious episode in the class
struggle and the feminist struggle. Sardine boats and fishermen joined
in the fight. These women were the driving force behind this movement
that the fishermen supported. Joséphine Pencalet of the Penn Sardin
strike committee, saw her candidacy for the Municipal Council
invalidated by the Council of State. "After all, she's just a
fishmonger." Contempt for class, contempt for gender! With 1,600 workers
and 500 workers on strike, the Penn Sardins demanded a 20 cent increase
and respect for legal overtime pay. After a meeting of more than 4,000
people, the demands were accepted in a factory. The employers hired
strikebreakers who entered a café to provoke, the tone rose, followed by
gunshots. Three sailors and the mayor were injured. A riot ensued and
the strikebreakers were arrested. A powerful surge of local and national
solidarity came to help the Penn Sardin struggle with donations. The
factory workers accepted all the demands: one franc per hour, payment
for overtime, night work. A beautiful women's strike, an exemplary
struggle through the solidarity it generated. An unfailing determination
which overcame ruthless employers.

Dominique Sureau (UCL Angers)

Anne Crignon, A beautiful women's strike, Les Penn sardin, Douarnenez,
1924, Éditions Libertalia, May 2023, 168 pages, 10 euros.

To validate

[1]Anne Crignon, A beautiful women's strike, Libertalia, p. 105.

[2]Method of preserving food by sterilization in suitable, hermetically
sealed containers

[3]Anne Crignon, A beautiful women's strike, Libertalia, p. 59

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-Anne-Crignon-Une-belle-greve-de-femmes-les-Penn-sardin-Douarnenez-1924
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