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Latin Immigrants Fuel Dodge City's Meat-Packing Boom January 29, 1998 By SHIRLEY CHRISTIAN DODGE CITY, Kan.-Like a swaggering cowboy coming in off the trail, Dodge City is flush these days. Its economy, if not booming, is at least "hitting on all cylinders," in the words of one business leader, and the muscle is being supplied largely by men and women from Mexico and Central America. For more than a decade the immigrants have been pouring onto the High Plains to work in the meatpacking plants here, drawn by the lure of stable jobs at union wages with full benefits and the chance to buy a home and join the middle class. Some come wearing cowboy hats and driving pickup trucks with license plates from Mexico. Others are veterans of the insecure life of migrant farm work farther west. Still others are fleeing what they see as the increasingly unwelcoming atmosphere of Southern California, or they have left lower-wage jobs in Texas. They are taking jobs that civic and business leaders say local young people shun, leaving for opportunities in larger cities. "The story here and across this part of the country is that we've quit producing an adequate number of workers to do the jobs traditionally done in various communities," said John C. Campbell, president of the Dodge City Area Chamber of Commerce. "Dodge City is engaged in the important business of feeding the population," Campbell said, "but without enough workers. In this country, we've made it socially unacceptable for our own young people to do anything except the white-collar-and-tie kind of job. So Hispanic workers are doing those jobs-in the slaughter houses-for average wages of $22,000 a year, which makes them middle income in Dodge City." Hispanic workers constitute about 75 percent of the work force at Dodge City's two largest meatpackers, those of Excel Corp., part of Cargill Foods, with about 2,500 workers, and National Beef Co., part of Farmland Industries Inc., with 1,300 to 1,400 workers. Similar estimates are made for the work forces of meatpacking plants at Garden City, 50 miles to the northwest, and Liberal, 75 miles to the southwest. The trend is being repeated in many other low-population counties across the Midwest, the South and the Plains states, especially in communities with meat or chicken-processing plants and low unemployment rates. The Center for Immigration Studies, in Washington, said in a report last year, "Counties where immigration's impact is rated as 'intense' or 'hot' are found not only in California, Texas, Florida and New York, but also in Iowa, Georgia, Kansas and Idaho." Further, the spreading impact of immigration is thought to be understated in the report because it was based on data from the 1990 census. In Dodge City's case, most of the immigrant influx has occurred since 1990. The changing makeup of Dodge City resonates throughout the community, nowhere more so than in the public schools, which are struggling to deal with explosive growth and change in the student body. In Unified School District 443, which serves Dodge City, Hispanic students make up 42.7 percent of the 5,115 total. In the lower grades, they account for 52 percent to 54 percent of the pupils. The population of Dodge City is estimated to be up 18 percent to 20 percent from the 1990 census figure of 21,000, and civic leaders say all of the increase, and more, can be attributed to the Hispanic arrivals. Without them, they say, the population would be declining. More than half the home purchases last year were made by Hispanic buyers. Some churches have become bilingual, with Hispanic members making up about half the congregations. Banks and stores are looking for bilingual employees. The Dodge City Daily Globe publishes a tabloid weekly in Spanish. School Superintendent Sharol Little is studying Spanish. So are the officers and staff members of the Ford County Sheriff's Office, successor to the operation once run by the fictional Matt Dillon and the real-life Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp. About half the people in the county jail, which holds 72, are usually Hispanic detainees, said Undersheriff Bryan Burgess. Dodge City was founded in 1872, first serving as a center for the buying of buffalo hides and later as a trailhead for cattle driven up from Texas and then sent east on the Santa Fe Railroad, which still slices through the center of town, parallel to Wyatt Earp Boulevard. Although a handful of Hispanic families have been here since their ancestors came as railroad workers, most of the longtime inhabitants of Dodge City are descendants of northern Europeans, some of whom made their way west along the Santa Fe Trail long ago. "We have two cultures that are diverse, but they're merging," said Jeffrey Hiers, an insurance man and chairman of the Chamber. "If we said it was easy, we'd be lying, but we've not seen any big racial incidents, not like what I saw growing up in Atlanta in the '60s." Israel Padilla, a native of the Mexican state of Chihuahua who married a Kansan, said he got along with both cultures in Dodge City and dismissed the problems as mostly small things. Padilla said, for example, there were complaints of rowdiness involving Hispanic residents. "Spanish-speaking people like to express themselves, outside as well as inside," he said, "so noise is a problem for some people. But I always think that if you know the language you can get along with anyone." Padilla, 32, is the youngest of nine children in a family split between Kansas and Chihuahua, Mexico. He arrived as a high school junior, cared for by an older sister who found work in the meat plants. Struggling to learn English, Padilla finished high school, then went to St. Mary's of the Plains College in Dodge City on a soccer scholarship and earned a degree in physical education. Along the way, he, too, went to work for Excel, where he remains today while looking for a job that will make use of his college degree. As Padilla talked, another sign of the cultural divide showed when two of his brothers and two teen-age nephews walked in the front door of his home-unannounced. "They never call first," said Rebecca Padilla, who grew up in Wichita and met her husband in college. One of the brothers, 36-year-old Jesus, sat down and talked about his work at the National Beef plant, pulling out a pay stub showing that, in a week with extra holiday pay, he earned $583 and cleared $443. A good job is all that keeps him in Dodge City, he said. "I never wanted to come to the United States," he said. "I began to work in California years ago, then I returned to Chihuahua. But I couldn't find a good job, and my mother kept telling me to leave, that she didn't want me lying around the house being lazy." By contrast, Horacio Padilla, 39, newly arrived from Texas, seemed thrilled that he had already been hired by National Beef, despite a shriveled left arm. He said the health benefits for his family were a big attraction and that Dodge City was a good place for his four children to learn English, which he called "the language of opportunity." One question that seems to arise very little is whether all of the immigrants are here legally. The Immigration and Naturalization Service has occasionally conducted raids on meatpacking plants in western Kansas and elsewhere on the High Plains, but civic leaders say the immigration service is spread so thin that its agents seldom get west of Wichita. "We have no interest in hiring illegals," said Jim Maher, human resource manager of Excel. "They do nothing but cause trouble because if they're caught they leave, and then we're short workers. We require all the documents the government will allow us to request without running into conflicts with civil rights laws." Maher said that "word of mouth" was his main recruitment tool, with workers here telling relatives in Mexico about the benefits and the wage scale, which starts at $8.64 an hour and goes to $12. Despite that, he said, the turnover at the plant is about 50 percent a year, with many people working a few months, then returning to Mexico, often to return here a year or so later. The turnover in the beef plants is one of the reasons that school administrators and teachers face stiff challenges in educating some of the children, as they are regularly pulled out of school to return to Mexico. While maintaining instruction in English, the school system has hired a few bilingual teachers and more than 30 bilingual teachers' aides to provide individual help to new students with limited English. School officials say that about 20 percent of the Hispanic students arrive with virtually no knowledge of English. This year, a newcomers' class was initiated for those in grades three through six. It includes a six-week course in basic English, and then, with an assigned a "buddy" to accompany them, the new students start regular class. "When they come they are intimidated by the United States," said Veronica Williams, the bilingual teacher of the newcomers' class. "We try to teach them self-esteem and build on the skills they have." After more than 30 years without new schools, the school district opened three new elementary schools in 1995 and plans a vote this spring on a proposed $45.5 million bond issue to build a new high school and convert the old high school into classrooms. But administrators expect to be using portable classrooms before any new building is ready. Even though most of the new Hispanic residents are not eligible to vote, school leaders expect the bond issue to pass easily, reflecting the expansive and optimistic mood that seems to pervade Dodge City. Last June, voters overwhelmingly approved an additional one-cent sales tax to finance a series of public works, including a center for special events. Private donations are being used to renovate the red brick Santa Fe Railroad passenger depot. All this adds up to an estimated $150 million in nonresidential construction, expected to begin within a year. "And meatpacking is paying the bill," proclaimed Campbell of the Chamber of Commerce. "Does it smell? Yes. So do paper mills. And our air is cleaner than in Los Angeles." Border. The GAO issued a 101-page report in December that concluded the INS has no effective means of determining whether border control strategies such as Gatekeeper are effective in deterring illegal immigration. Since 1994, the INS spent $2.3 billion on border control, including doubling the number of Border Patrol agents. Smuggling fees have increased, but evidence from Mexicans attempting entry, and employers and workers in labor markets in which unauthorized workers are hired, suggest that stepped-up border control operations have not deterred foreigners from attempting illegal entry. The INS responded that it has definitely slowed illegal entries in the four areas in which Border Patrol agents are concentrated, but that it does not yet know how these border control efforts have affected movements over the entire US border. The INS had a 14-foot wall built to separate the twin cities of Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora, increasing the portion of the border with steel walls and chain-link and barbed-wire fences to 62 miles. East. INS enforcement in western New York reportedly caused migrant workers to leave the area in November 1997 before crops were harvested, but it was not clear how many crops remained to be harvested in an area in which heavy snow canceled meetings to discuss INS activities. Rep. Bill Paxon (R-NY) asked US Attorney General Janet Reno for a Justice Department investigation of an alleged INS shooting at fleeing migrant farm workers being driven to pick cabbage at the Star Growers farm about 50 miles northeast of Buffalo; a sheriff's investigation concluded that the INS did fire shots at fleeing migrants on November 5, 1997. The INS estimates that 50 percent of western New York's 4,000 seasonal farm workers are in the country illegally, and reported that 550 illegal aliens were apprehended between March and October 1997. Local farmers argue that they cannot hire local workers to do farm work: according to one, "I've tried having people on welfare come in and pick for us. It was a joke. They didn't last a day." Midwest. In Ohio, a federal judge prohibited the Ohio Highway Patrol from questioning motorists about their immigration status and seizing immigration papers during routine traffic stops. The Toledo-based Farm Labor Organizing Committee filed a lawsuit in 1996, asserting that the Ohio Highway Patrol singled out Hispanics for traffic infractions, and then questioned those stopped about their immigration status. The 1996 IIRIRA permits local police officers to receive INS training and to arrest suspected unauthorized foreigners, but most police departments have elected not to become designated INS officers. Under current law, police officers can detain suspected illegals if they have also violated a state law. The Los Angeles Times on December 10, 1997 reported that Mexican drug cartels are using the spread of unauthorized migrants into the midwest to spread drugs throughout the region. Judge Carol Egly of Des Moines says that meatpackers who hire Mexican workers create the infrastructure for drug gangs in Iowa. The director of the Wyoming Department of Criminal Investigation says "our greatest problem today is illegal aliens and drugs." Interstate 80 has been described as the major west-east route along which unauthorized migrants are smuggled to jobs in the midwest and east. The number of migrants is high and climbing: in five days in January, 1996, for instance, a special task force seized 14 vehicles carrying 223 undocumented workers on I-80 in the Grand Island area in east-central Nebraska. In some cases, after state police stop vans of unauthorized aliens, the INS says that it has no one to take them into custody, so they are released. INS says that, if there are fewer than 15 persons to be detained, it may not send a van to get them. West. The INS on November 24, 1997 apprehended 100 unauthorized Mexican workers in raids at four Sherwood Forest Farms sites around Centralia, Washington, after most of the company's 1997 work was completed. Sherwood Forest Farms employs about 450 workers on a seasonal basis to produce holiday wreaths, garlands and centerpieces. On December 16, 1997, the INS apprehended 30 unauthorized workers in two potato packing sheds near Rexburg, Idaho. Since January, more than 300 unauthorized workers have been apprehended in the area, most during raids on 19 sheds this summer. Dave Smith, president of the Idaho Grower Shippers Association, said that six potato packers have requested 500 H-2B foreign workers. In Turner, Maine, Mexican immigrants dominate the work force at the DeCoster Egg Farm, the largest brown-egg producer in the US, with 4.5 million chickens. About half of DeCoster's 500 workers are Hispanic. Some of the Mexican-born workers are in areas of the US that have had few Mexicans. They say that they left California or Texas to enjoy the higher wages and better benefits associated with fewer newly arrived Mexican workers. In December, the NLRB announced that it would issue complaints charging that DeCoster unlawfully interfered with workers engaged in union activities, spied on workers and fired union supporters; the United Paperworkers International is attempting to organize DeCoster workers. The charges were filed against the two successor companies, Maine Ag and Quality Eggs of New England. In 1996, DeCoster was fined $ 2 million by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration for violations of health and safety laws. This fine and publicity resulted in boycotts of DeCoster eggs, and a law approved in Maine that permits workers on large farms to unionize under state laws. Most farm workers are not covered by the NLRA. The US DOL ordered a Maine farm to pay $34,000 in back wages and fines for hiring six workers from Puerto Rico, firing them and then abandoning them at a bus station so that it could hire H-2A foreign workers. White Oak Farms is also barred from the H-2A program for 16 months. Patrick McDonnell, "Mexican Arrivals Seek New Frontiers: Far-flung regions like Maine and Alaska join in witnessing largest sustained mass migration to U.S. of any group," Los Angeles Times, January 1, 1998. Edward D. Murphy, "Probe finds evidence of egg farm offenses," Portland Press Herald December 16, 1997. Midwest: Meat/Poultry Processing Meat. The Gazette of Cedar Rapids ran a series of stories on immigration in the Cedar Rapids area in November 1997, noting that in FY97, the INS apprehended 2,529 unauthorized foreigners in Iowa and Nebraska. Only nine percent of those apprehended were caught at work; most were detected after routine traffic stops or in crime investigations. According to the articles, meatpacking is the magnet attracting immigrants to Iowa; the work requires little training or English language skills. Jerry Heinauer, of the INS Omaha office estimates that 25 percent of the meatpacking workers are unauthorized. US Attorney Stephen Rapp said in an interview that "out-of-state recruitment" of workers is a red flag for INS investigators, but that many meatpackers use independent brokers as recruiters which gives the companies "deniability" when unauthorized workers are found. In some cases, the workers brought to Iowa by brokers have had fraudulent documents. IBP announced in October that it has joined the Basic Pilot employee verification system, which permits IBP to check the social security numbers of all newly hired workers. The INS raided an IBP plant in June 1997, when it removed 130 of the 2,100 employees in Joslin, Illinois. IBP employs about 38,000 workers at 23 plants across nine states, with most earning between $7.00 and $11.00 an hour. In Virginia, the 1,800 workers at the Smithfield Packing Co. pork processing plant in Smithfield, VA who are represented by the Laborers' International Union of North America, will receive a $1 an hour wage increase over the life of the four-year contract, or three percent over four years, plus a new health plan and increased pension benefits. The median first year wage increase in re-negotiated contracts in 1997 is three percent. The General Accounting Office is conducting a study, expected to be released in February 1998, of the impacts of immigrant workers in meatpacking plants on towns and cities in Nebraska and Iowa. Poultry. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch on December 28, 1997 profiled Noel, Missouri, a town of 1,300 just a few years ago, is believed now to have 2,000 Hispanics in the area. Most were drawn to Noel by Hudson Foods Inc; 60 percent to 65 percent of Hudson's 1,400 employees are Hispanic. In 1993-94, McDonald county schools had no Hispanics; in 1997-98, one third of the children in Noel Elementary School are Hispanic. Hudson helped to start the multicultural center and donated land for a soccer field. In December 1997, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration proposed fines of $840,000 against Hudson's Noel plant for "willful safety and health violations" that have led to 300 cases of cumulative trauma disorders. This is the second OSHA fine for Hudson in 1997; Hudson is appealing both. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union represents Hudson employees. Missouri has 10 major poultry operations, most of them in the southwestern part of the state; Missouri has migrant centers in Monett and Malden. Tyson Foods Inc., the nation's largest poultry processor, capable of processing 45 million chickens each week, will acquire fifth-ranked Hudson in January 1998. About 20 percent of Tyson's 71,000 US employees are Hispanic. Tyson pleaded guilty in December 1997 to providing illegal gifts to former USDA secretary Mike Espy. Many of the workers in midwestern meat and poultry processing are recruited along the Texas-Mexican border by "independent recruiters" who receive a bonus of up to $300 for each worker they refer who stays on the job for 30 days. These recruiters often promise good quality housing, ample fishing and other recreation opportunities, and as many hours of work as the worker wants-some workers are employed by two plants, working one shift at one plant, and another shift at a different plant. The San Diego Union-Tribune ran several stories on November 2, 1997 about the US jobs that attract unauthorized immigrants, opening the series with the story of the 500 Guatemalans from Huehuetenango who work at the Case Farms poultry plant in Morgantown, a city of 18,000 in Burke County, North Carolina. There were 344 Hispanics in the county in the 1990 Census and an estimated 10,000 in 1997. Like many poultry and meat processors, Case offers a finder's fee to all persons who recruit new workers, typically $50 to $200 for each worker who remains on the job at least 30 days. "Independent" recruiters go to places with workers-in this example to Immokalee, Florida in 1991--and earn $1,000 to $2,000 for returning with a van load of new workers; sometimes workers also pay the van driver for the jobs. After they are hired, they in turn tell their friends and relatives about the jobs, setting private labor recruitment networks in motion. According to the article, the INS has not been in Morgantown in the 1990s. Case Farms workers earn $55 per day, $6.85 per hour, compared with $3 per day in Guatemala. After three months of employment, workers are eligible for health benefits, one week of vacation and five paid holidays a year. In 1995, Case workers voted to have the Laborers Union represent them, a response to worker complaints of fast assembly lines and "lack of respect." Chicken processing is a year-round job, so many of the workers have their families with them in the US. Many families live in trailers on the edge of Morgantown. Many of the children speak Mayan dialects instead of Spanish and the local school system is debating how best to teach them. The accompanying articles described an Arkansas labor contractor/recruiter who advertised a toll-free number on Spanish-language radio stations along the southwest border so that workers in the border area seeking jobs in the midwest could contact him. Employers paid $200 to $300 a worker, and the workers who used his services paid the recruiter another $250-$350 for fraudulent work documents. In December 1997, Texas Rural Legal Aid sued Case Farms of Winesburg, Ohio in Del Rio, Texas, on behalf of 14 workers, charging that the poultry processor sent a recruiter, America's Tempcorps, to south Texas promising jobs, free housing and transportation to and from work. But the workers charged that were forced to pay for poor housing and rides to work, and those who didn't have the money had it deducted from their paychecks-putting their pay below the federal minimum wage. Case says that its 400 workers, most Guatemalan, in Ohio are paid about $6.65 an hour, much better than $1 per day in Guatemala. Case says that Rural Opportunities Inc., a social service agency based in Alliance, Ohio, takes care of the workers' social needs. The INS has apprehended about 100 unauthorized workers in the Case Ohio plant and has two pending cases against Case, which was fined $16,000 in 1995 for employing illegal workers. The United Food & Commercial Workers Union is trying to organize workers at the plant. In California, some 2,250 workers at Foster Farms went on strike October 8-27, 1997 at the world's largest chicken slaughterhouse. Foster processes 550,000 chickens a day. Foster hired replacement workers, which prompted charges that the company was hiring illegal alien workers. Foster Farms workers, who are represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers, currently earn $8 per hour. Workers voted 1,372 to 517 to accept a new contract that provided a $1,000 bonus for returning workers. Foster offered a 1.5 percent annual wage increase ($0.65) over five years, plus $1,000 a year in bonuses, but also asked employees to pay up to $600 a year for health insurance, up from the current $230 a year. Foster Farms had sales of $825 million in 1996. Wisconsin dairy farms paid workers an average $21,261 in 1996, according to the Dairy Personnel Management Conference in December 1996, but they face increased difficulties hiring workers in a state where the average manufacturing pay is $29,875. Hourly wages for part-time milkers range from $6.50 to $10. Most milkers stay less than two years on one farm. Bill Lambrecht, "Influx of Hispanic workers alters culture of small southwestern Missouri towns," St Louis Post-Dispatch, December 28, 1997. Rick Ruggles, "Impact of Meatpacking Plants Studied," Omaha World-Herald, December 22, 1997. Marcus Stern, "Legislators put focus on fences, not jobs," San Diego Union-Tribune, November 3, 1997. Rick Barrett, "Dairy farms in hiring crisis," Wisconsin State Journal, November 9, 1997. Steve Rubenstein, "Foster Farms threatens to replace striking Central Valley workers," San Francisco Chronicle, October 18, 1997; Gazette of Cedar Rapids, http://www.fyiowa.com/aliens/index.htm Family Income: A Real Chance To Restore Food Stamps For Immigrants, 1/19/98 The Clinton administration is expected to propose $2 billion over five years to partly restore food stamps for legal immigrants. The 1996 welfare law eliminated food stamps for 935,000 legal immigrants, of whom it is estimated about 500,000 are children. In addition, 630,000 children who are U.S. citizens live with legal immigrant adults who may have lost food stamps. While U.S. children are still eligible for food stamp assistance, if the family's total allocation is reduced, it will affect every family member, including the children. Full restoration of food stamps would cost $3 billion, and it is not yet known exactly how the $2 billion will be distributed. The loss of food stamps is causing an upsurge in the need for emergency food, according to private charities. Lisa Carr, legislative analyst for Catholic Charities USA was quoted in the Washington Times (1/19/98) stating, "For the first time, many of our food pantries are empty and that frightens us." ** YOU CAN HELP! ** Call your member of Congress and Senators and tell them to support a restoration of food stamps for legal immigrant families with children, as well as for the elderly and disabled. Federal Government Assistance Programs for Migrant Farmworkers The federal government spends over $600 million annually to
assist migrant and seasonal farm workers and their children.
Most of this federal MSFW funding--$624 million in FY98--goes
to the Big Four programs--Migrant Education ($305.5 million in
FY97, $305.5 million in FY98); JTPA-402 programs ($69.3 million
in FY97, $71 million in FY98); Migrant Health ($72 million in
FY97, $74 million in FY98--Migrant Health gets nine percent of
the consolidated health center appropriation); and Migrant Head
Start ($159 million in FY97, $174 million in FY98 --MHS gets
four percent of the Head Start budget). According to Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs,
about half of the federal 402 funds are used to provide classroom
training;, 20 percent are used for administration and 20 percent
each for on-the-job training and work experience programs. AFOP
reported that its farm worker data base included 51,200 farm
workers at the end of July 1997. DOL Standardized Participant
Information Data on farm workers trained and placed by 402 programs
show that most were placed in nonfarm jobs, where they had an
average entry-level wage of $6.21 per hour. It appears that most
of those who enroll in 402 training programs are not taken directly
from the fields--82 percent were unemployed or not in the labor
force, 60 percent had good English, and 61 percent had earnings
of less than $2500 in the year prior to 402 training. Almost
60 percent of those who went through a 402 program, at an average
cost of $6250, were placed in jobs. Migrant Head Start. The Redlands Christian Migrant Association
operates a 107-child Head Start program in Dade City for the
pre-school children of farm workers on a $600,000 per year budget;
60 children attend at no cost and the other 47 pay $16 per month.
Redlands operates 80 child-care centers across Florida. Wendell
N. Rollason, founder of the Redlands Christian Migrant Association
in Dade County in 1965, died in January. There are an estimated
10,000 to 15,000 farm workers in Dade county. Migrant Education.
The Migrant Education Program (MEP), begun in 1965, currently
provides $305 million in supplemental educational and other services
to the children aged three to 21 who crossed school district
lines with their families within the past three years as the
parents sought farm jobs. The need for the program is premised
on the assumption that one or more moves with parents who migrate
to fill farm jobs will disrupt the child's schooling. MEP has
identified about 800,000 children nationwide who satisfy these
criteria, including 110,000 in Texas. Los Angeles county has
12,000 MEP children. MEP funds are distributed to states on the
basis of the number of eligible children identified, not served.
In addition to hiring recruiters to locate eligible children,
the MEP program has established a toll-free number for parents
to call to determine if their children are eligible for MEP services:
(800) 234-8848. The Los Angeles Times on November 27, 1997 reported
"according to recent studies" that the "average
migrant student will attend 24 schools by the time he or she
reaches fifth grade," and that half of the 750,000 children
ages three to 22 in households headed by migrant farm workers
do not graduate from high school. MEP says that, in 1965, 90
percent of migrant children did not finish high school. The UFW announced in October 1997 that it would request no
ALRB-sponsored elections of California strawberries workers in
1997. The UFW said it would defer until 1998 a vote at Coastal
Berry, its major target and the direct employer of a peak 1500-berry
workers for 1,200 acres of berries. This means that despite dozens
of full-time union organizers--40 percent of the UFW's budget
is devoted to organizing--the UFW did not feel comfortable that
it could win certification as bargaining representative for strawberry
workers. Landon Butler, one of the buyers of Coastal, reportedly
has left Coastal management. UFW President Arturo Rodriguez said:
"we've made tremendous progress this year . . . it's just
a matter of time. We're committed. The AFL-CIO is committed.
We're both too invested in it. We're here to stay."
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