The chronicle of Eger Tobacco Factory

The cigar factory

Mária Varga was born in the year the factory was founded

At the beginning of 1912, general rules concerning working hours were introduced into the tobacco industry as a whole. Mrs. Sándor Nógrádi, ’’Tériké“, whom we met a few pages ago, at that time twenty-eight years old and no doubt a fine, handsome woman into the bargain, no longer had to toil her nights away in the “smoke house”. The factory began its day at 6:30 a.m. and continued until 4:15 p.m.with a fifteen minute mid-morning break and an hour and a half for lunch. The first siren went off ten minutes before clocking-in time, then sounded again five minutes later.

Those who were late were fined. Paid holiday had to be earned. In order to qualify for it you had to have provided

service to Customs and Excise as a tobacco worker for a total of five years, and the year previous to claiming paid holiday had to be free from absences from work. Those who fulfilled these stringent conditions - provided no objection was brought against the quality of their work - were entitled to six days paid holiday a year. This system of allocating paid holiday remained current right up until 1943. In 1912 the Finance Ministry set up a pension scheme for workers employed by the State Excise Department. From that date on, a position as a tobacco worker represented a secure future. It was employment by the state, “pensioned” employment, and those who managed to hang onto it could look forward to a secure provision for their old age. This pension provision was the privilege of the patient and the long-lived. Not only did both women and men have to wait for their sixtieth year in order to begin receiving benefits, but a large proportion of this long chunk of life - forty years to be precise - had to have been devoted to the full-time service of the Royal Hungarian Tobacco Excise Office. No exceptions were made to this rule, except in the case of those who had become