On Monday, April 20, at Stew Leonard’s in Newington, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and state officials were joined by local grocer Stew Leonard Jr. to announce first responder express lines for police, firefighters, nurses and health care workers.
They also were joined by local food pantries that are in crisis. Food pantries across Connecticut have been closing and being reduced due to the high demand of local residents from the coronavirus. Stew Leonard’s is donating more than 40,000 pounds of groceries to those in need.
Blumenthal declared grocery employees in Connecticut and throughout the nation as essential personnel. Grocery workers are interacting with hundreds-of-thousands of people each day, in providing produce, dairy, food items and paper goods to the general public as they restock essential items during quarantine and social distancing.
“I have proposed a Heroes Fund. These folks are among our heroes. They should be recognized and rewarded, and we need to retain and recruit more like them. Not only in the grocery stores, but obviously health workers, fire, police, postal workers,” Blumenthal said.
Blumenthal and Stew Leonard also discussed the “Heroes Fund,” a proposal that Senate Democrats announced last week, which calls for a $25,000 pay increase for all essential employees putting themselves selflessly on the front line of the war on Covid-19.
