The following is a crosspost from Confined Spaces, a newsletter published by the former deputy assistant Secretary for OSHA, Jordan Barab.
Trump’s war on workers is reaching full bloom. And not just a war on workers’ rights to organize or to engage in collective bargaining; Trump has now going after workers’ lives.
Yesterday, word began circulating that Trump and Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. had begun the process of laying off at least two-thirds of the staff at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Around 873 staff are expected to be cut from NIOSH, out of 10,000 health staff expected to be eliminated from HHS. That means that this small important agency will sustain almost ten percent of the overall HHS cuts.
NIOSH has been part of the Centers for Disease Control since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, and RFK Jr recently moved it to his newly created Administration for a Healthy America which is allegedly designed to “implement the Make America Healthy Again goal of ending the chronic disease epidemic.”
But in case you haven’t noticed, the work of DOGE and the Cabinet Secretaries who work for Elon have nothing to do with health– or government efficiency. NIOSH, for example, has a tiny budget of $363 million, amounting to $2.20 per American worker. The agency has an enormous mandate and a long list of accomplishments over the past fifty years, making it one of the most efficient agencies in the federal government.
Supervisors, including NIOSH director John Howard, are all on administrative leave until June 2 at which point we will be terminated. Some bargaining unit employees are still working, but most have apparently also been put on administrative leave until June 30, when they will be terminated.
This action caps a week of anti-worker actions by the Trump administration. Last week, collective bargaining rights were eliminated for around one million federal employees in the Departments of Defense, State, Veterans Affairs, Justice, Health and Human Services, and others. This move impacts 75% of the roughly 1.6 million unionized federal workers. The Labor Department also terminated 69 international programs aimed at combating child labor, forced labor and human trafficking. How does enabling more forced labor and child labor help American workers and our trade deficit?
Obviously, it doesn’t. So, tariffs?
The Impact on Workers
What is the impact of this action on American workers? In short, more preventable injuries, disease and death.
Without NIOSH’s ability to investigate outbreaks and certify respirators, more healthcare workers, firefighters, construction workers and others will get sick and die Sooner or later this country will face another pandemic and, as with COVID, workers will be on the front lines without the benefit of research to protect them. More workers will die of heat-related illness, and more miners will succumb to dust-related illness and other deadly hazards.
These drastic cuts will eliminate this country’s leading occupational safety and health researchers and devastate the nurse, doctor and safety professional training programs across the country that keep workers safe and productive. The nation already has a critical shortage of the safety workforce, and these cuts will sever that pipeline beyond repair.
As University of California at San Francisco professor Dr. Robert Harrison points out, “there will be no independent reliable source of information about line speed and crippling back and hand injuries in meatpacking and poultry plants, nor about the thousands of chemicals that cause cancer and reproductive damage, and the stress of work on heart diseases, diabetes, obesity and mental health.”
Anyone who follows the lengthy and tortured path that OSHA must already travel to issue health and safety standards knows that they are highly dependent on reliable science. Must of that science, and the analysis of studies done by non-government researchers is conducted by NIOSH. The destruction of NIOSH will only lengthen the time that OSHA needs to issue new protections and make OSHA standards more vulnerable to legal challenge.
NIOSH program analyst Suzanne Alison in Cincinnati described the impact for everyone:
“Even if you think the government work that’s done here doesn’t touch you, it probably does. If you’ve painted at your house, you’ve probably used an approved respirator. If you’ve had surgery, the medical workers and the hospital facility used NIOSH research, you know, to keep you safe and to keep themselves safe.”
And how much money will more injured, sick and dead American workers save?
NIOSH was created by the Occupational Safety and Health Act to be the lead research agency for the federal government. The agency focuses on workers in the highest risk industries – mineworkers, firefighters, construction workers, healthcare workers and agriculture workers – all who are at high risk of job injuries, illness and fatalities. While Trump and Elon have allegedly been eliminating agency overlap, the fact is that NIOSH is only government agency that conducts research, and gathers and analyzes the information to keep workers safe.
It’s hard to list in one short post the many activities NIOSH conducts to protect this country’s workers. But here’s a very short list.
- Research: NIOSH conducts research into health and safety hazards, recommending needed standards for OSHA, conducting educational activities, conducting investigations in to workplace disease outbreaks and certifying respirators among other tasks.
- World Trade Center and Nuclear Veterans: The agency also administers the World Trade Center Health Program that provides monitoring and treatment 0f 9/11 recovery worker following their exposure on and in the months following 9/11, and conducts exposure and health assessments for the government’s program to provide healthcare and compensation to Cold War nuclear veterans who were exposed to radiation and other toxic substances building the country’s nuclear arsenal. These are the only two programs that are expected to survive.
- Respirator Certification: One of NIOSH’s most important functions is certification of respirators. Most people don’t realize that any respirator will not protect against every hazards. The type of chemical or dust, its concentration, its level of toxicity all go into determining the appropriate respirator. And even then they won’t work without fit-testing and maintenance. NIOSH tasked with certifying the respirators that are appropriate to any work environment. Without that certification, more workers will choose inappropriate respirators.Also, NIOSH was instrumental in pushing back CDC’s effort to promote surgical masks to protect workers against COVID infection, as well as novel respirator viruses. Countless healthcare workers needlessly lost their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic because they were not using appropriate respirators. NIOSH’s Respirator Selection Guide for the Healthcare Industry is a crucial resource for protecting healthcare workers.
- Heat: Summer is coming and NIOSH has played an instrumental role in protecting workers against heat-related illness and death. The agency first issued a Criteria Document, recommending an OSHA standard, in 1972. It helped develop best practices for acclimatization and establish wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) guidelines for accurately measuring the effect of heat on the human body. The Heat Safety Tool App, developed by OSHA and NIOSH, provides real-time, location specific heat index readings and life-saving work-rest recommendations. NIOSH’s current criteria document on heat is the international bible for protecting workers.
- Firefighters: NIOSH also protects firefighters. It runs the National Firefighter Cancer Registry which tracks exposure-related illness and studies long-term health effects, and studies hazardous exposures, including research on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a group of chemicals used by firefighters and chemical manufacturing workers that have been linked to cancer and other health effects.
- Investigations: NIOSH Health Hazard Evaluations investigate mysterious occupational disease outbreaks caused by chemicals or infectious diseases. Its Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) Program, conducts investigations of fatal occupational injuries. Interested users can have access to the full text of hundreds of fatality investigation reports.
- Mine Safety: NIOSH plays a crucial role in mine safety and mine operators are likely rejoicing at the agency’s demise. NIOSH’s Miner Health Program conducts research, workplace interventions, evaluation, and community engagement in order to eliminate or reduce mining fatalities, injuries, and illnesses. Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program studies respiratory diseases in miners related to coal mine dust exposure. The program also provides health information to miners through health screenings and surveillance. In recent years, the agency has developed continuous Personal Dust Monitors to help miners track respirable coal dust exposure, self-contained self-rescuers, which are emergency breathing devices to help miners escape after explosions and cave-ins, proximity Detection Systems which keeps miners safe from being struck by dangerous machinery.
- Child Labor: While states address labor shortages by making child labor easier, NIOSH protects young workers. Wage and Hour Division at the Labor Department determines what dangerous jobs young workers are forbidden from doing, and the research into those jobs comes from NIOSH. The National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety (NCCRAHS) – tracks and reduce injuries among child workers on farms, and Youth@Work – developed a foundational curriculum for teaching young workers about job safety and health.
- Educational Resource Centers: NIOSH funds 18 Education and Research Centers (ERCs) provide post-graduate training and research in occupational safety and health disciplines. ERC faculty and trainees conduct research to advance occupational safety health. ERCs serve as resources for our nation’s workforce through continuing education and outreach in their region.
This is just a short list of the important, life-saving work that NIOSH conducts.
What Is To Be Done?
With all of the havoc raining down on the Department of Health and Human Services now, a small agency like NIOSH is likely to get lost in the fog of war. But that’s more reason to contact your legislators about the impact that this action will have on the lives and health of American workers.
NIOSH is a small agency, so even our friends in Congress need to be contacted and educated. But don’t stop with our friends. Some Republican legislators are having problems with this action. For example, nearly 200 workers at the Morgantown, West Virginia, NIOSH location have been notified they will be laid off. West Virginia Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito stated that she is
concerned that today’s cuts at CDC/NIOSH could impact vital health programs that are important to many West Virginians, especially our coal miners. During my meetings with Secretary Kennedy prior to his confirmation and as recently as last week, we discussed how important the health of coal workers is to West Virginia. Any cuts that impact their health monitoring need to be restored immediately. I am working with the Department of Health and Human Services to understand the depth of these cuts, both to programs and the workforce in Morgantown.”
We need to transform her “concern” into action.
According to CNN journalist Manu Raju, when asked about the HHS cuts, Senator Bill Cassidy, who chairs the Senate HELP Committee and cast the key vote for RFK Jr. to become HHS Secretary, told him “I’m trying to understand it.”
Lets all help him understand.
Meanwhile, AFGE is planning to rally outside the NIOSH offices in Cincinnati this afternoon in protest of the layoffs and other rallies around the country are being planned.
Note: At this moment, NIOSH’s website, which contains thousands of vital studies, reports, research articles, criteria documents and facts sheets, is still active. Download what you need before the documents are disappeared.
