AFL-CIO, 26 Labor Unions Demand USDA Release SNAP Contingency Funds, Protect 90K Jobs

Trump administration blocks more than $5 billion in SNAP contingency funds, jeopardizing thousands of jobs

(Washington, D.C.) –– In a new letter, the AFL-CIO and 26 labor unions demand Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins immediately release more than $5 billion in SNAP contingency funds, warning that failure to do so jeopardizes 90,000 jobs and will force 42 million Americans—including 1.2 million veterans—to go hungry. If the Trump administration refuses to release SNAP contingency funds, the people who help feed America—from state and local government workers to food manufacturers to delivery drivers and grocers—could soon struggle to feed their own families. 

In the letter, the unions argue, “SNAP is an economic multiplier. Each $1 spent by SNAP generates up to $1.80 in economic activity.” If the administration continues to block emergency funding, 90,000 workers could lose paychecks, including those who help distribute SNAP benefits to our communities. “SNAP creates union jobs along the food supply chain. 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,” the letter reads.  

“President Trump is deliberately inflicting pain on workers by cutting jobs, slashing food assistance and ripping away livelihoods,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. “These cuts are leading to hungry children and seniors, veterans losing benefits, and droves of working people  spending their mornings in line at the food bank. The administration could continue SNAP without a hitch. Instead, it’s inflicting cruelty on people and treating this crisis as some sick political game.”

These additional job losses would only add to the pain President Trump has inflicted on workers during the shutdown. The administration has forced 730,000 federal workers to do their jobs without pay; locked 670,000 federal workers out of their jobs; threatened to destroy 130,000 health care jobs; and sidelined hundreds of thousands of workers in construction, transportation and energy by canceling infrastructure projects.

Instead of protecting American workers and ensuring parents can put food on the table, President Trump and his allies in Congress are:

• Refusing to show up to work and reopen the government, taking more than a month of paid vacation on taxpayers’ dime.
• Sending $40 billion overseas to bail out a foreign government.
• Ramping up construction on a $350 million luxury ballroom paid for billionaire CEOs.
• Blowing nearly $200 million on private jets.
• Dining on “delicate rosettes of smoked salmon” and dancing 6,000 miles away.

By forcing more than $5 billion contingency fund to sit idle––money the law requires the administration to use when funding lapses––President Trump and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins are breaking protocol they created less than 30 days ago. During this shutdown, “the USDA employed its interchange authority to transfer $300 million in tariff funds from Section 32 to the WIC account to maintain WIC benefits during the shutdown,” the unions write. 

One day before the shutdown began, Secretary Rollins signed a plan confirming that SNAP contingency funds are ready to use if funding lapses before the government reopens. And in 2019, the Trump administration argued that contingency funds should be used if SNAP funding lapses during a government shutdown. “The Administration can and must take action immediately to ensure that millions of families across the country can rely on SNAP benefits to continue putting food on their tables,” the letter from the unions concludes.

Contact: Onotse Omoyeni, 202-637-5018