More than 25 labor unions — including United Auto Workers and the National Education Association — have sent Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins a letter requesting her department release $5 billion in contingency funds to bankroll the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
“SNAP creates union jobs along the food supply chain,” reads the letter, first shared with NBC News. “Union members are on meat-cutting floors, delivering and processing food, processing SNAP benefits, picking and harvesting the food that ends up on dinner tables, working in America’s forests, and checking out your constituents at the grocery store. SNAP is vital to creating good jobs for hundreds of thousands of American families.”
The government shutdown has put SNAP benefits, which serve millions of people in the U.S., under threat. The USDA has said the program will stop Nov. 1.
Additionally, the unions want the USDA to “cover the remaining amount needed to fully fund SNAP in November in the absence of appropriations.”
“There’s nothing ‘fun’ about hungry children and seniors, veterans losing benefits, or seeing droves of working people forced to spend their mornings in line at the food bank,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a news release. “The administration could continue SNAP without a hitch. Instead, they’re leaning into cruelty to punish perceived political enemies and double down on treating this crisis as some sick political game.”
NBC News has reached out to the USDA for comment.