The Trump administration is reinstating hundreds of employees at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health who were placed on leave after receiving reduction-in-force notices, a reversal of its push to significantly shrink the agency's workforce.
The Department of Health and Human Services is restoring the positions of all employees who got RIF notices last year, according to current and former employees who spoke with Agri-Pulse. In a statement, HHS Press Secretary Emily Hilliard confirmed the reinstatements.
"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," Hilliard said. "Enhancing the health and well-being of all Americans remains our top priority."
NIOSH, a division of the Centers for Disease Control, researches ways to prevent work-related injuries and illnesses, including those that impact farmers, fishermen and forestry workers. The agency funds 12 regional Agricultural Safety and Health Centers housed in university and health systems across the country, which offer safety education and research to farmers, farmworkers, and others who work in the ag sector.
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Last spring, as many as 873 NIOSH employees received termination notices, though some of these notices were rescinded in subsequent months, according to court filings. After a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction last summer that temporarily barred HHS from carrying out the RIFs, many impacted employees maintained their on-leave status.
"This moment belongs to every single person who refused to stay silent," Micah Niemeier-Walsh, a vice president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 3840 and an industrial hygienist at NIOSH, said in a statement Wednesday. "Every rally, every media interview, every petition signature, every act of solidarity by NIOSH employees and our partners in the labor movement led to this victory of saving NIOSH."
Julie Sorenson, the director of the Northeast Center for Occupational Health and Safety, said she was "relieved" by the reinstatements, adding that with much of NIOSH's staff missing, leaders of NIOSH-affiliated agricultural safety and health centers had been concerned about securing future funds and setting up review panels for future research.
However, she noted that not all of the agency's previous employees will be returning, noting that some have since retired or taken jobs elsewhere.
"We're still trying to sort that out now — who's back and who's not," she said.
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