During this time she helped establish the Texas Workers Alliance in San Antonio alongside Emma Tenayuca.
[3] On her return to Laredo in 1935, Manuela and her husband, James Sager, began to consolidate their local efforts among Mexican workers into a statewide movement.
Later that year, Manuela and James were appointed official organisers of the Rio Grande Valley at a Corpus Christi conference that established South Texas Agricultural Worker's Union (STAWU), which mainly represented predominantly Mexican field and packing workers.
During the strike, thousands of workers at over 130 plants protested a wage reduction of one cent per pound of shelled pecans.
In October that year, the National Labor Relations Act raised wages to twenty-five cents an hour, although soon after Southern automated the shelling process.