Biden to Give $600 Relief Payments to Meatpacking, Farm Workers

  • Agriculture Secretary Vilsack announces aid as Delta spreads
  • Program is a ‘reflection of the essential nature of the work’

    

Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
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The Biden Administration plans to distribute one-time $600 pandemic relief payments to U.S. meatpacking and farm workers, expanding an agriculture aid program that so far mostly has benefited farm owners to also include a low-income, largely immigrant food-chain workforce that’s been hit hard by Covid infections.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the aid Tuesday amid a new wave of Covid cases related to the Delta variant and as President Joe Biden seeks to unite the progressive and moderate wings of the Democratic to pass his $4 trillion economic agenda.