In 1932 Franklin Roosevelt defeated Herbert Hoover for president. As a result, in 1932, 1933 and 1934, he created many governmental agencies, among them the National Rehabilitation Administration, NRA. Somewhere in these agencies was a regulation that gave labor the right to organize. Prior to the depression, labor unions had lost a lot of members. This was an incentive for them not only to regain the members they had lost, but to solicit additional members.

A year or two before, around 1930, I had joined the San Francisco Restaurant Association which represented about ten percent of the restaurants in the City. Eventually, I was elected to the board of directors.

In l933 or 1934 the local board of the Culinary Workers Union met and decided to call upon the industry composed of restaurants, lunch counters and hotels and to demand that all their employees be required to join the union. They also requested increased wages, an adjustment in the working hours and certain privileges that they had not enjoyed at that time. The letter to the Association was practically an ultimatum. These conditions had to be reviewed by the Association to begin the bargaining process.

A committee was formed composed of six members, two from the hotels, two from the restaurants and two from the cafeterias and lunch counters. I was selected as one of the six members to handle the negotiations. After our meeting we invited the union officers to meet with us at the St. Francis Hotel. The union made its demands and would not listen. We could not come to an agreement.

At the suggestion of the late Mr. Happinger, President of the Association, the restaurants contributed money for a "war chest." If there were a strike we would all close our stores and use the money to put an ad in the newspapers to tell our side of the story to the public and let them decide. My employees were already getting paid at the wage scale the union was asking, but some of my employees, the dishwashers, were not union. A union representative came in one day during working hours to discuss it with them. That made me mad. I asked him to wait until after working hours to discuss the union with my workers. The union had no right to interrupt them while they were working and to solicit them while they were on duty. The union representative immediately threatened to call a strike and asked me if I knew what that meant. I asked the men to tell me. He said "Well, for instance, we will ask all your union employees to step out and not work and who would you operate with?" I was committed to the Association. I would not back down to their demands. That the union would have to bargain with all of us and not one at a time.

I told him that if these employees are called out there are others that I can solicit. His response was, "if you do we will have pickets in the front and back of your store and the politicians from the city who come here every day will stop coming in." I told him that I would find others to take their place.

Three days later they placed pickets in the front and back of my store. Half of the employees went out. Others, as they came to report for work, were scared to come in and we had a heck of a time to operate at lunch. However, I hired enough employees and we managed.

The reason that I didn't bargain alone was because I didn't feel that it was right. I was a party to a joint agreement with the Association. I didn't want to be called a "God-damned" Greek or a "yellow Greek" or an undependable Greek. I wanted to live up to the bargain that we, as a group, had made.

I went to the board of the Restaurant Association Board and asked the members what they intended to do. Would they go through with what we had decided? I wanted a decision from them and quick. Well, the hotel manager at the St. Francis who was Jim McCabe , and the manager from the Mark Hopkins, who was George Smith told me, "Peter, the big game between California and Stanford is in two days; and, that if we close down the hotels now we will be in big trouble. Please bear with us until Monday. This is a big thing for us. Then we can call our people together and we will live by our agreement." Well, even though I didn't like it, I had no choice. I decided to wait.

When Monday came they found another excuse. I asked them what right they had to enter into an agreement and then say they couldn't make a move of any kind without the approval of their bondholders and the owners of the hotels.

A membership meeting of all restaurants and hotels was held at the Colonial Room of the St. Francis Hotel where some l85 people attended. To my surprise, George Smith reluctantly opposed the idea of closing down the businesses even though he was a party to the agreement. I was exposed to about ten days of boycotting and I was going through hell. I stood up and asked them if they were men or mice. I wanted to know where the membership stood. Did they mean what they had agreed to do, or were they playing games? I told them that if they were men they should live up to their agreement. In a vote 180 out of 185 agreed with me and only Smith of the Mark and McCabe of the St. Francis together with three others disagreed.

Still, the members refused to close their shops and it became evident that I would have to fight the battle alone. The Culinary Union was going to use my restaurant to set an example and eventually break us one by one.

My friend at City Hall the late William Fitzgerald, a sheriff's deputy, called me outside and said to me, "Peter, what are you trying to do, commit financial suicide? Fight a battle alone? Can't you see that when you owners don't stick together you don't stand a chance? Why don't you let me talk to these men and come to an agreement to let your five men join the union. Then you can operate your business peacefully and get your old customers back."

Well, I did, and two or three days later the pickets were pulled out. Peace was arranged and my old help was brought back. The few so-called new men were discharged. I remember my temporary chef at that time, God bless him, told me "I can't blame you Mr. Boudoures. Don't worry about me, I'll find another job. You take care of your business."

Shortly thereafter a general strike was called in San Francisco. Every retail business, grocery store, department store, drug store, restaurant, you name it, was notified on a particular Saturday that all the employees were going to walk off the job on the following Monday. So, not knowing how long this would last, I ran down (diminished) all my perishable merchandise in order to eliminate waste.

About 6:00 PM that Saturday night, however, the cook's agent who had threatened me during the previous strike, came over and said, "Mr. Boudoures, I want to talk to you." I got scared. I asked him, "am I in trouble again?" He said, "No, I have a permit for you. We're not going to close down this town 100%. We're going to permit people who have no homes to eat and we will allow visitors to find a place to stay. We have selected a certain number of restaurants and cafeterias which we will allow to operate. Yours is among the restaurants we've selected."

I explained to him that I had nothing to operate with, that I couldn't sell empty pots and pans and that my refrigerator boxes were nearly empty. He then handed me a permit to operate and told me to place it in the window. He told me that the strike was set to start Monday. He told me to go around and pick up merchandise and bring it here and start operating because people would be standing in line 24 hours a day. He said, "There are only a few places in the whole city operating, you are number 2, and you are in a convenient location. The only thing we ask of you is that you don't raise your prices. Cut down your menu to a number of short items that are easy to prepare, so that you can serve people quicker and better."

I thanked him and started going around picking up merchandise of all descriptions. Instead of having a menu of 75 to 100 items, we featured 5 or 6 items; and instead of preparing food for each customer, we prepared our food in advance. People stood in line every day, 24 hours a day. We did a tremendous business, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Originally, there were 5 restaurants open, then they increased to 9 and then I think to 12. Within a week, more or less, the strike was settled and everybody went back to work.

Shortly thereafter, the very same people from the association who had failed to honor their agreement with me and reneged on their promise to close down their businesses when I was picketed, called a meeting and invited me to appear before them. I had no use for these nine men representing the Mark Hopkins Hotel, the Palace Hotel, the Pig and Whistle Corporation, Gene Compton's Cafeterias, and others. The meeting was at the William Taylor Hotel and I appeared before them. They had the audacity to ask me how much money I paid the union agents for them to give me a permit to operate, and why I did so.

Well, so help me God, being of a temperamental nature, and sometimes speaking before and thinking afterwards, I didn't lose any time in letting them have it. I don't know where the words came from, I said, "Gentlemen, of all the people on earth who should dare to question me, you should be the last. You were the ones who entered into an agreement to stay united in the face of union pressure, to close shop together if one was picketed. When I was picketed you abandoned me and left me on the side to die. I had to fight alone the battle of every hotel, restaurant and cafeteria. You did not live up to our agreement."

It became necessary for me to settle my affairs with these people because, all they wanted was to unionize my five dishwashers who were already receiving union scale. It was the hotels and dairy lunches and the cafeterias and a lot of other restaurants who were chiseling their employees, working them longer hours and paying them much less than I was. And I called them every name under the sun that I could think of, and walked out of the meeting. I dropped my membership in the Association. I considered it degrading to pay dues to an association where the members did not live up to their agreement and left me to fend for myself when things got rough.

As time went on, and to my satisfaction, the culinary union, composed of cooks, bakers, waitresses, bartenders, dishwashers and other miscellaneous workers, became stronger and stronger and made additional demands upon the owners. Soon another strike took place that lasted three months. The very same hotels and restaurants which refused to negotiate before, were now closed for 90 days. About a year later a similar strike took place when the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, which was newly organized, met the same fate.

Each time during this period my relations with the unions were normal and congenial. The others were stricken and closed, and so they suffered the consequences. I remained open. Each time the wage scale went up I met it. I must say their demands were not unreasonable because the employees in the industry were underpaid and they deserved a better living.

I have nothing but praise for the unions in San Francisco. They raised the standard of living for their members. The owners had no one but themselves to blame for their problems.

I never joined the association again. I became friendly with the union officials. The restaurant had almost become the headquarters for the labor council. Every Friday evening, after their regular meeting, the union officials would come into the restaurant to eat and discuss their policies and decisions. Many ate in my restaurant every day. I became friendly with the union leaders because I came out of poor circumstances and no money could alienate my affection for the workers who were exploited and who needed protection. Without the unions they would continue to be exploited forever and ever.

(Editors note: There were over two hundred restaurants and coffee shops in San Francisco owned by Greek-Americans. They would often have labor disputes with the Culinary Workers union. The Union was strong at that time. Boudoures was often asked to use his connections to help a restaurant owner work out a deal with the Union, which he did.)