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Sue Ko Lee
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Sue Ko Lee (March 9, 1910 - May 15, 1996), born in Honolulu, Hawaii, was a Chinese American garment worker and labor organizer with the Chinese Ladies' Garment Workers' Association, Local 341, a San Francisco chapter of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU). In 1938, Lee participated in the National Dollar Stores Strike, a fifteen-week strike against the National Dollar Stores garment factory, which at the time was the longest strike in the history of San Francisco's Chinatown. Later on in her life, she became a leader in the ILGWU in California.

Early Life
Born on March 9, 1920 in Honolulu, Hawaii, Lee grew up the oldest of 10 children in Watsonville, California. At eighteen, she married Lee Jew Hing, who had immigrated to the United States in 1921 and had taken a job as a bookkeeper with at National Dollar Stores, San Francisco's first retail chain in the West Coast and one of the largest Chinese American-owned retail chains in U.S. history. Lee took a job working in the National Dollar Stores garment factory as a buttonhole machine operator. Working at National Dollar Stores was a family affair as many, if not all, of Lee's family members took jobs with the retail chain.

""There weren't too many employees. All my family worked for Joe Shoong...all met brothers, my sister Mary, even my brother-in-law. It was [also] a matter of family connections. My husband got his job because his uncle was working for Joe Shoong.""

- Sue Ko Lee

Life at National Dollar Stores
During this period in U.S. history, there were few opportunities for Chinese women and white-owned companies frequently refused to hire them. As a Chinese American-owned compnany, National Dollar Stores, founded and owned by Joe Shoong, provided employment to Chinese women in the area, albeit with low pay and substandard working conditions.

Although feeling fortunate to have a job, Lee made only 25 cents per hour as a buttonhole machine operator. Eventually, low pay and substandard working conditions in the garment factory led Lee and her coworkers to hold a vote to join the ILGWU. Using ballots written in both English and Chinese, the women of the National Dollar Stores garment factory became the Chinese Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, Local 341.

The National Dollar Stores Strike
After forming their workers' union, the CLGWU held several bilingual collective bargaining sessions with the National Dollar Stores and signed a preliminary agreement to improve their pay and working conditions in the garment factory. Following this preliminary agreement, National Dollar Stores arranged a sale of their stores and factories to Golden Gate Manufacturing, which Lee and her coworkers took as an attempt to get off the contract. As a result, the newly unionized women made the decision to go on strike, with more than 150 workers walking out.

With the help of the ILGWU., Lee and other strike leaders organized picket lines and breakfasts of donuts and coffee for the strikers. Lee and other strikers were actively engaged in the strike—walking the line, organizing picket shifts, and speaking at public meetings.The strike lasted for fifteen weeks, the record for longest strike in San Francisco Chinatown history at the time, and ended after the strikers gained the support of white retail clerks. Only after white National Dollar Stores retail clerks refused to cross the picket line and shut down the strike, did the owner, Joe Shoong, finally negotiate with the strikers to settle a contract. ""The strike was the best thing that ever happened. It changed our lives.""

- Sue Ko Lee

Due to their efforts, the striking workers won a five percent raise, a 40-hour work week, health benefits, improved working conditions, and a guarantee the new proprietors Golden Gate Manufacturing would provide work for a minimum of 11 months out of the year for its workers. Despite gaining these protections, Golden Gate Manufacturing went out of business the following year in 1939.

Post-Strike
After Golden Gate Manufacturing shut down business, Lee and her other coworkers were able to get jobs in white-owned factories that offered better pay than their previous employer. In the 1950s, Lee joined the ILGWU as a staff member in Local 101 and attended national conventions throughout her career with the union.

Reflecting on the importance of the strike and what it meant to her and the Chinese community as a whole, Lee stated:

Later Life
In addition to her union work, Lee worked machines and functioned in quality control for various shops, while her husband worked as a cutter, or tailor. Throughout the years, Lee preserved items and documents about the strike in a scrapbook and spoke with historian Judy Yung at length about her memories of the strike in an oral history interview included in Yung's book "Unbound voices : a documentary history of Chinese women in San Francisco".

Sue Ko Lee passed away in 1996 at the age of 86.