The Department of Health and Human Services is rescinding layoffs for employees who recently worked at a workplace safety agency within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Last April, HHS sent reduction-in-force notices to about 1,000 employees at the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which focuses on workplace safety and health standards. Those layoffs targeted about 90% of NIOSH’s staff.
HHS reinstated hundreds of NIOSH employees about a month after sending layoff notices. But according to the American Federation of Government Employees, the department “reversed course completely” on Tuesday, and revoked all layoff notices sent to NIOSH employees.
HHS Press Secretary Emily Hilliard confirmed the department rescinded all RIF notices sent to NIOSH employees. In a statement, she said that “under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, the nation’s critical public health functions remain intact and effective.”
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“The Trump Administration is committed to protecting essential services — whether it’s supporting coal miners and firefighters through NIOSH, safeguarding public health through lead prevention, or researching and tracking the most prevalent communicable diseases. Enhancing the health and well-being of all Americans remains our top priority,” Hilliard said.
Last May, after pressure from unions and bipartisan pushback from lawmakers, HHS partially reversed course and reinstated 328 of the 1,000 terminated NIOSH employees. The reinstatements brought back NIOSH employees working in coal mining research programs in Ohio and West Virginia, as well as employees working in the agency’s World Trade Center Health Program, which supports 9/11 first responders.
Micah Niemeier-Walsh, a NIOSH employee and vice president of AFGE Local 3840, said NIOSH employees and unions “have been fighting relentlessly” to full reinstatement of terminated staff.
“We still have a long road ahead of us. We have a lot of rebuilding to do,” she said. “It’s going to take some time to get projects moving again.”
Niemeier-Walsh said laid-off NIOSH employees have been on paid administrative leave for about nine months, preventing hundreds of federal scientists from carrying out their research. Ongoing lawsuits have prevented some agencies from finalizing employee layoffs.
“My coworkers are so dedicated, and they would rather have just been working. They didn’t know, every day, am I going to get terminated tomorrow? It wasn’t nine months of a vacation. It was nine months of limbo and uncertainty,” she said.
In a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing last May, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), the chairwoman of the labor, health and human services, education, and related agencies subcommittee, said she was “pleased” with the agency’s partial reversal of the RIF at NIOSH, but called on HHS to reinstate even more NIOSH employees.
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“While your action last week was a good step, there are still other divisions within NIOSH with specialized staff who conduct essential, unique work,” Capito told HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during the hearing. “I support the president’s vision to right-size our government, but … I don’t think eliminating NIOSH programs will accomplish that goal.”
Even after the partial reinstatements, NIOSH employees said most of the agency’s programs were still too understaffed to fully function.
NIOSH employees represented by AFGE have met with lawmakers and held rallies, calling for the rest of their colleagues to be brought back on the job.
AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a statement Wednesday that NIOSH is a “small but vital federal agency” that helps prevent employee injuries, illnesses and deaths at workplaces nationwide.
“The administration’s attempt to lay off nearly every NIOSH worker was shameful and illegal, considering that much of NIOSH’s work is required by law,” Kelley said.
Last October, HHS sent RIF notices to nearly 1,000 employees — including some CDC employees — during the recent government shutdown. But those RIFs were put on hold by a federal judge’s order. The current continuing resolution will block those layoffs at least through Jan. 30.
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