By the early 1970s, there were an estimated 150 to 200 garment shops in Chinatown. The total increased to about 600 by the early 1980s. Most of these shops were unionized. In a concerted effort to break the union, garment shops began hiring non-union workers and illegally reduced their contributions to employee health care plans. Then when the contract with the ILGWU came up for renewal in 1982, garment shop owners refused to sign it. Employers viewed their Chinese female employees as subservient and disinclined to strike.

With the assistance of union officials, about 20,000 members of Local 23-25 went on strike in July 1982. They held a mass rally in Columbus Park in Chinatown to protest the failure of the garment shops to sign the union contract. Realizing that they had wrongly assumed that the Chinese women would not strike, the garment shops quickly buckled and signed the contract. Wing Fong Chin, who was now Vice Chair of the Executive Board of Local 23-25, helped coordinate the rallies.

In 1983, members of Local 23-25 elected her Chair of the Executive Board. She became the first woman of Chinese ethnicity to lead a large American union local.