Gleaners offering assistance to federal employees during shutdown

Gleaners Food Bank is working to help federal employees affected by the government shutdown.

Volunteers preparing food donations for people in need — Source: Vladimir Vladimirov / Getty

INDIANAPOLIS — Gleaners Food Bank is working to help federal employees affected by the government shutdown.

About 24,000 Hoosiers are employed by agencies like the TSA, FAA, FBI, Social Security Administration and other government agencies.

“All of them by the end of the month will not get paid and be expected to work,” said Fred Glass, the President of Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana.

To help, Gleaners reached out to several organizations to offer food assistance. Of the 350 TSA employees at Indianapolis International Airport, 225 have already signed up for a Gleaners food distribution.

“I was shocked by that, that so many people are living on the edge, paycheck to paycheck, that when they start losing one paycheck, they’re prepared to the charitable food,” Glass said.

The shutdown is also taking a toll on food banks themselves. Normally, food banks receive support from federal programs, but those resources are now halted.

For every one meal the charitable food system provides, Glass said, the federal government typically supplies nine.

“It’s left to the charitable food network to pick up the pace,” he said. “The sad news is we just don’t have the scale to do what the federal government did, given we’re nine to one. But we’ll do what we can and hope that Congress gets called back into session to stop this government shutdown.”