Throughout the 1930s, Lucia was jailed and beaten multiple times while organizing protests and strikes. Despite that, she continued to organize unions, and worked to organize the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike in San Francisco. After that strike, she organized workers in San Francisco into the Department Store Workers Union and the Retail Clerks Association. She organized two unions in 1938 and 1941 for dime store workers. She was at the time an organizer for the Cap makers International Union, and had the protesters carry their babies on their shoulders and hand out pamphlets reading "Take our mothers off the streets. Little Children Like to Eat".