May, 1959, 1959

The AFL-CIO Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) began its work in California uner the direction of former UAW organizer Norman Smith. There is a great deal of information on the progress of the AWOC in Mitchell's correspondence with Smith and Galarza throughout the summer; see also the agreement between NAWU and UPWA on jurisdiction over the workers organized by AWOC (21), and the letters from Mitchell to various AFL-CIO state labor councils asking them to circulate petitions among farm workers calling on the AFL-CIO for help in organizing (13). There is an exchange between Mitchell and Assistant Secretary of Labor Newell Brown on Mitchell's complaints that the BES is anti-union (1, 19), a memorandum from Leon Schachter to the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Department requesting assistance in organizing migrant farm workers in the Northeast (18), and a memorandum from Mitchell to NSF on plans for the union's 25th Anniversary celebration (25)