January to March, 1963, 1963

Local 300 attempted to organize a group of egghouse workers at the corporation farm of the Sweetlake Land and Oil Co. near Lake Charles, but the union drive stalled when the employer insisted that his employees were agricultural workers and did not come under the NLRB jurisdiction. On the Sweetlake case, see Mitchell's memorandum on the NLRB hearings (Jan 22), the various briefs filed in the case (Feb 4), the NLRB decision (Feb 11), and the tally of ballots in the NLRB election (March 4). Mitchell began a project to convince the government and the NSF to set up a program for training unskilled sugar cane workers in the operation of modern farm equipment; information on this subject appears in Mitchell's correspondence with NSF Executive Secretary Fay Bennet, and in Mitchell's exchange with Seymour L. Wolfbein, Director of the Office of Manpower, Automation and Training of the US Department of Labor (Jan 16; Feb 11). The campaign of Local 300 to organize the menhaden fishing industry might best be followed in Mitchell's weekly reports to Patrick Gorman