Families, educators, food shelves brace for SNAP cutoff: ‘This is a policy choice’

October 31, 2025 by

Matteo Halbesleben speaks at a press conference outside a St. Paul food shelf.

Matteo Halbesleben of Minneapolis is among 42 million people nationwide, including 440,000 in Minnesota, who will see food assistance from the federal government, known as SNAP, disappear tomorrow.

Benny Roberts is executive director of the Hallie Q. Brown Food Shelf in St. Paul, where demand already has doubled this week, prompting staff to put out a call for donations – money, food, clothes, toiletries and volunteer help.

Devina Moore teaches at nearby Benjamin E. Mays elementary school, where over half of students qualify for free or reduced school lunch. She and other educators are trying to keep things “as consistent as possible” for children – 150,000 of whom rely on SNAP in Minnesota – while scrambling to connect families with other resources.

As they brace for the impacts on their families and their community, Halbesleben, Roberts, Moore and others are also calling out the driving force behind the SNAP cutoff and ongoing federal government shutdown.

“Greed,” Roberts said during a press conference outside his food shelf in the city’s Rondo neighborhood, arranged by unions, faith groups and progressive organizations.

“This isn’t a charity issue,” St. Paul school board member Erica Valliant added. “This is a policy choice.”

Sitting on $5 billion

The motive behind that choice, union leaders say, is especially callous – an attempt by President Donald Trump and Republicans to use hunger as political leverage. Why else would the administration refuse to release more than $5 billion in SNAP contingency funds?

The AFL-CIO and 26 labor unions today sent a letter demanding Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins release the contingency funding. AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said Trump is “deliberately inflicting pain on workers by cutting jobs, slashing food assistance and ripping away livelihoods.”

“The administration could continue SNAP without a hitch,” she added. “Instead, it’s inflicting cruelty on people and treating this crisis as some sick political game.”

SNAP cuts will only add to the pain 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.

Pain spreads

As the shutdown enters a second month, more Minnesotans, like Halbesleben, will feel the pain.

He began accessing SNAP benefits several years ago, after a string of health crises – skin cancer, reconstructive surgery and a car accident – left him unable to work. Halbesleben is now able to work part time, but still cannot stand for more than four hours without needing to lie down for a physical-therapy exercise that resets his rib cage.

“My story is my own, but there are other stories out there – people who have families who are trying to keep their kids fed, elderly (people) who can’t work anymore and whose retirement doesn’t pay enough for them to (buy) food.”

He said SNAP benefits allow him to put money he does earn toward keeping his home. He already lost the home where lived at the beginning of his health troubles.

Valliant and Moore said they worry that losing SNAP benefits will create a similar snowball effect for SPPS families, making it even harder to afford housing, transportation, energy and other costs.

“It’s overwhelming to see what our families are already going through, the needs that they already have,” Moore said. “Our youngest citizens are being affected the most, and they can’t do for themselves.”

‘We need community’

Valliant noted that Minnesota students will continue to have access to free breakfast and lunch on school days, and Gov. Tim Walz and some counties have tapped emergency funds to help prepare local food shelves like Hallie Q. Brown for a surge in demand.

But it won’t replace SNAP.

“For every meal a food shelf provides, SNAP provides nine,” Valliant said. “We’d be hard pressed to replace that with donations and good will alone, and we should not have to.”

Roberts agreed, calling the shutdown a continuation of “overt and covert practices that pick on the vulnerable for the profit of the comfortable” – a nod to the political fight behind the government shutdown, which pits tax cuts for the wealthy against funding that keeps clinics open and health insurance affordable.

“We’re going to brace for harm – in community,” Roberts said. “We’re going to support each other – in community. We’re going to do our best, but we need community.”

Looking to access food, donate or volunteer with a local food shelf? Click here for a map of locations across Minnesota.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

Filed Under: Community, Union Events Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

McCollum, Craig hear workers’ shutdown stories – and safety concerns

January 19, 2019 by

U.S. Reps. Angie Craig (L) and Betty McCollum meet with federal workers at the St. Paul Labor Center.

Eventually, the federal government shutdown will reach a tipping point, federal employees told U.S. Reps. Angie Craig and Betty McCollum in a roundtable discussion arranged by their unions at the St. Paul Labor Center Friday.

What that tipping point ends up being is a question keeping many around the table awake at night.

“I’m very afraid,” Erin Phelps, an air traffic controller at Minneapolis St. Paul airport told the DFL congresswomen. “Our systems are being degraded by this shutdown, and it’s scary.”

Air traffic controllers, members of NATCA, are being forced to work without pay during the shutdown, as are TSA agents and officers at federal prisons in Minnesota, members of the American Federation of Government Employees. They missed their first paychecks last Friday, and it appears likely they will miss another next week.

That means workers like Phelps, whose husband is an air traffic controller too, are dipping into their savings to pay for day care, gas, housing, health care co-pays and other costs – or taking out short-term loans.

The mounting stress and plummeting morale are making their workplaces less safe, workers warned, both for themselves and the public they serve. “I’m becoming more convinced someone is going to die in our prisons,” said one corrections officer, who drove from Rochester to attend the meeting.

McCollum, a DFLer who represents Minnesota’s 4th Congressional District, blasted President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans for dragging out the shutdown to gain leverage in their efforts to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.

“We all took the same oath of office to protect and defend the United States,” McCollum said. “This is not protecting and defending… This is putting politics over country.”

Craig, a DFLer newly elected to the state’s 2nd Congressional District, noted the twisted irony that Republicans’ crusade to make the nation more safe with a wall is, according to workers in our airports and prisons, having the opposite effect.

“It makes no sense to me,” Craig told workers in the meeting, hosted by the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation. “Every Democrat I talk to is up for a conversation about border security, but we cannot keep holding federal workers hostage.”

Craig and McCollum want Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to call a vote on budget bills negotiated in December, when Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress. “It’s certainly not the budget I would have wanted, but I’m willing to support it” to end the shutdown, McCollum said.

A veto-proof majority of senators supported the budget, too – until McConnell pulled the bill in deference to Trump’s last-minute demand for $5 billion in wall funding.

Craig recalled her first vote as a member of Congress for “exactly the same bill the Senate passed three weeks before I got there.” She added: “The Senate needs to take up its bill again and end this.”

Furloughed workers from other government agencies, including the IRS, HUD and the FDA, also attended the meeting. They offered McCollum and Craig a litany of examples of how the shutdown is impacting Americans, from blocked access to tax forms needed to fill out financial aid documents to government-backed housing loans caught in limbo.

Workers also described mounting economic pressures as the shutdown drags on. “I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place,” one HUD employee said. “My lease is coming due, and I can’t sign a new lease because I don’t have any income. It’s appalling. It feels like we’ve been made invisible.”

To make matters worse, federal employees are barred from accepting certain gifts, making it difficult for labor organizations and other agencies to funnel support directly to them during this time of hardship.

St. Paul RLF President Bobby Kasper said the federation’s nonprofit arm, which provides emergency assistance to union members during strikes, lockouts or other financial crises, is seeking legal advice about how to make sure the labor community can provide assistance in solidarity with federal workers for as long as the shutdown lasts.

“The people impacted most by this shutdown didn’t go into public service to get rich, and they don’t deserve to be treated like a political football,” Kasper said. “The labor community is going to stand with our brothers and sisters in AFGE and other federal unions, and it’s reassuring to know we have friends in Congress who will do the same.”

Filed Under: Labor Voices, Union Events Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Smith pledges to fight for federal workers as shutdown hits home

January 11, 2019 by

TSA agent Celia Hahn speaks at a press conference inside MSP Airport with Sen. Tina Smith.

The political staredown in Washington is maddening. Its human toll grows more heartbreaking each day.

U.S. Sen. Tina Smith stood at a podium in Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport today holding a letter from Joseph, an air traffic controller from Lakeville. He sent the senator a photo of his newborn son, born 10 weeks early on the 10th day of the federal government shutdown.

Joseph told Smith there is just one Twin Cities hospital that provides care to babies born so early, and it’s not in his current insurance network. Because the government is shut down, Joseph can’t switch plans. He can’t apply for paid family leave, either.

“I take solace in what matters most,” Joseph wrote. “Oliver is getting a little stronger and a little closer to home every day.”

The government appears no closer to reopening, however.

Today 800,000 federal employees missed their first paycheck since the shutdown began. President Trump marked the occasion by holding firm to his position – one he has said he’s willing to maintain for months – that the government won’t reopen unless he gets $5 billion in funding for a wall along the nation’s border with Mexico.

Smith, who met with impacted federal workers at the airport today, called on Senate Republicans to stand up to Trump and put people before the president’s political stunts.

The Republican-controlled Senate unanimously passed a short-term funding package last month to keep the government open. But Trump refused to sign it, opting instead to leverage a government shutdown for his unpopular wall.

“We should not be using the people standing behind me as bargaining chips,” Smith says.

Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell knows a veto-proof majority of senators supported keeping the government open without funding for the wall, but so far he has refused to stand up to Trump.

“All that has to happen is for Mitch McConnell to bring those bills forward,” Smith said. “This shutdown could end as soon as tomorrow if we could come together and appreciate that we should not be using the people standing behind me as bargaining chips.”

The people behind Smith were a handful of the estimated 5,470 federal employees in Minnesota either furloughed or working without pay during the shutdown.

Some are tightening their belts, tapping their savings or taking out loans to cover daily costs until they get paid again. Workers at the federal prison in Rochester have opened a food bank to support each other during the shutdown, corrections officer William Axford said.

“The things that would normally be inconveniences, like car repairs or maintenance, become back-breakers,” Axford, an officer in American Federation of Government Employees Local 3947, added.

Other federal workers are looking for new jobs. Celia Hahn, a TSA agent with 16 years of experience at MSP Airport, said her agency already faces a shortage of workers. In fact, management has announced plans to hold a hiring fair later this month.

Letter and photo received by Smith from a Lakeville air traffic controller hit hard by the shutdown.

Working long hours, short-staffed, for no pay takes a toll on workplace morale – and public safety, Hahn added.

“It’s definitely not going to make travel more secure the long this goes on,”the president of AFGE Local 899 said. “And that’s not because of people not doing their jobs. It’s because of people just not being here.”

TSA agents and corrections officers are on the low end of the federal pay scales. Hahn said TSA agents’ wages start at around $17 per hour. Sandstone prison guard Mike Weber said new hires make less than $20 in his shop.

Smith has signed onto a bill that would make sure another group of low-paid workers impacted by the shutdown – contractor employees – are made whole with back pay when the impasse ends, something that has not generally happened, according to the senator.

President Trump has said he can “relate” to federal workers and contractor employees going without pay, suggesting they are able to “make adjustments.”

But those adjustments come at a price for many, including Weber and his wife, who also works at the central-Minnesota correctional facility. Weber, president of AFGE Local 683, said they are one of nine couples on the payroll.

“Savings don’t last very long when neither one of us is getting an income,” he said. “We can’t tell our 4-year-old we can’t afford mac-and-cheese; we’ve got to keep putting gas in our car to go to work. So I think we’re going to have to look at taking out loans, and that costs anywhere from 5 to 10 percent interest.

“I think we’re going to have to start planning for the next shutdown when this one ends. That’s pretty sad.”

Filed Under: Labor Voices, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Union members rally in Minneapolis to end shutdown

January 10, 2019 by

Workers call on lawmakers to reopen the federal government – and put people back to work – during a rally near the VA Medical Center in Minneapolis.

 

Tomorrow, tens of thousands of federal employees won’t get their regularly scheduled paychecks. Today, their union family rallied in Minneapolis – and cities across the U.S. – to say that’s not OK.

Dozens of union members and retirees joined a demonstration along Hiawatha Avenue, just blocks from the Veterans Administration Medical Center. They called on President Trump and members of Congress to end the federal government shutdown and put federal employees back to work.

Gregg James, vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said lawmakers should “do their jobs and get the federal government back open – and not use us as pawns in their political game.”

An estimated 5,470 federal employees in Minnesota are affected by the shutdown.

Some are furloughed from their jobs. Transportation Security Administration agents, food safety inspectors, guards at four federal prison and other employees are working without pay.

Several workers from the VA Medical Center joined the rally over their lunch break. They aren’t directly impacted by the shutdown, as funding for their agency is in place through the end of the fiscal year. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t angry.

“I’m thinking about my brothers and sisters who are out there working for free and that are furloughed,” said Bryant Thomas, a St. Paul resident who works in sterile processing at the hospital. “There are 800,000, and I’m out here for them.”

AFGE, which represents some 670,000 federal workers nationwide, organized the rally, but members of several other unions – the Machinists, Education Minnesota, AFSCME Council 5, OPEIU and others – stood in solidarity with federal workers.

Brad Lehto, secretary-treasurer of the state’s largest labor federation, the Minnesota AFL-CIO, pinned blame for the shutdown on President Trump, who on Sunday told reporters he could “relate” to the struggles of federal workers going without pay.

“Donald Trump just thinks you can ask your father for money,” Lehto said. “It doesn’t work that way for everyone.”

Filed Under: Union Events Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Shutdown a ‘lose-lose scenario’ for veterans, furloughed workers

October 8, 2013 by
Stanley Walton, locked out of his job with the U.S. Veterans Benefits Administration, joins a picket outside the Whipple Federal Building on Fort Snelling.

Stanley Walton, a locked-out member of AFGE Local 1969, joins a picket outside the Whipple Federal Building on Fort Snelling.

Is Stanley Walton’s work essential? That depends on whom you ask.

Walton was one of 7,000 “non-essential” employees furloughed by the U.S. Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) today. He and about 150 others reported to the Whipple Federal Building at Fort Snelling, where they were handed letters instructing them to stay home until lawmakers in Washington had resolved the partial federal government shutdown that began Oct. 1.

Although the government considers Walton’s work non-essential, the homeless veterans who rely on him probably disagree. Walton says he connects “our most vulnerable veterans” with the housing, medical and other benefits they’ve earned as a result of their service.

That work doesn’t stop just because Congress can’t agree on a budget.

“It’s devastating,” said Walton, who served 25 years in the Army before taking a job with the VBA eight years ago. “I’ve received calls from veterans, and I have to let them know I can’t help you until the furlough is over.”

Others locked out today include workers who process appeals made by veterans claiming medical, job-preference or other benefits. These claims already can take more than a year to process, and the shutdown will only lengthen the amount of time veterans have to wait for a decision on their appeals.

The American Federation of Government Employees, a union of 670,000 federal employees nationwide, represents 208,000 workers with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Alma Lee, president of AFGE’s National VA Council, called the furlough a “lose-lose scenario for federal employees and the veterans we serve.”

“Veterans sacrificed greatly to earn their benefits, and we need to be on the job to deliver them,” Lee said. “VBA is already critically understaffed and the lockout is only making it worse. Our veterans deserve better from their elected leaders.”

A handful of AFGE members, supporters from other unions and veterans joined a picket line outside the Whipple Building today. They pinned responsibility on House Republicans, who are using the shutdown as leverage in budget negotiations, hoping President Obama and other Democrats will cave to their demands – like defunding the Affordable Care Act – in order to reopen the VBA and other government agencies.

“We went through this 20 years ago when the government shut down,” said Craig Maehling, a disabled veteran from Minneapolis. “It was wrong then, and it’s wrong now.”

[Click here to demand House Republicans allow a vote on a clean bill to keep the government open.]

AFGE members and supporters from the labor community picket outside the Whipple Federal Building.

AFGE members and supporters from the labor community picket outside the Whipple Federal Building.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,