The day after the election National Dollar Stores agreed to a closed shop and a wage increase. Two weeks later Shoong sold the factory to two of his former managers, who, taking the name Golden Gate Manufacturing, declined the union’s request that they maintain the agreement with their former boss. They also rejected the workers’ wage and hours proposal, and crucially, the demand that Golden Gate guarantee eleven months of work (the company’s average over the years) and convince National Dollar Stores to continue to stock its retail stores with the factory’s output.

On the morning of February 26 more than one hundred workers walked out and began picketing the factory along with three National Dollar retail shops in the city. It was a hard thing to do. In the tight Chinatown community, the wealthy Shoong was seen as a benefactor who provided work and contributed generously to the Chinese nationalist cause. Striker Sue Ko Lee recalled that mainstream Chinese organizations and businesses were not overtly hostile but “didn’t show us any support because we were all called troublemakers.” Backing for the strikers by leftist organizations didn’t improve the strikers’ standing with the more conservative elements in the Chinese community. And in San Francisco Chinatown, unions had traditionally meant one thing above all else: white organizations that discriminated against Chinese.

The National Dollar Stores struggle began to change that history. Although rare, strikes had not been unknown in Chinatown. None, however, had ever been supported before by the official labor movement. The difference this time was huge. The ILGWU gained strike sanction from the San Francisco Labor Council. As a result, the (white) members of the Retail Clerks union who worked in the National Dollar stores honored the factory workers’ picket lines in front of their workplaces, shutting down the shops. This moment of interracial solidarity on behalf of striking Chinese workers was a first in San Francisco.