Head of worker safety agency NIOSH restored, ahead of RFK Jr. hearing

The caput of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health and a fistful of teams astatine the bureau had their layoff notices rescinded Tuesday, aggregate officials say, and respective idiosyncratic information programs that had been eliminated by layoffs past period are being restored.

Letters reversing the layoffs arrived successful the inboxes of immoderate NIOSH unit a time up of House and Senate hearings Wednesday with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wherever helium was expected to look questions astir the layoffs.

Health officials and scientists being brought backmost to enactment see everyone successful NIOSH's respiratory wellness division, part of information research, part of compensation and investigation enactment and National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory according to an email obtained by CBS News.

"Secretary Kennedy has been moving hard to guarantee that the captious functions nether NIOSH stay intact. The Trump Administration is committed to supporting ember miners and firefighters, and nether the Secretary's leadership, NIOSH's indispensable services volition proceed arsenic HHS streamlines its operations," HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said successful an email.

A fistful of NIOSH unit moving successful the agency's World Trade Center Health Program antecedently had their layoffs reversed, aft a 2nd round of cuts astatine the bureau earlier this month. 

"While we observe with those who received a rescission missive from HHS, I americium mindful that others did not. I americium hopeful that we tin proceed to marque the lawsuit for reinstating everyone astatine NIOSH," the agency's now-reinstated director, Dr. John Howard, wrote successful the email.

The reinstatements mean that immoderate NIOSH programs mightiness soon beryllium capable to resume, aft they were antecedently hobbled by the layoffs.

For example, the agency's National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory had been forced to suspend caller approvals of instrumentality similar caller N95 respirators and protective cogwheel for firefighters aft the archetypal circular of cuts connected April 1. Investigations of workplace wellness risks done NIOSH's Health Hazard Evaluation programme were besides upended by the layoffs, but unit moving successful those probes person present been reinstated.

But galore workers besides stay efficaciously laid-off astatine the wide-ranging agency, which functions arsenic the probe and investigating counterpart to the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Mine Safety and Health Administration.

In NIOSH's Spokane and Pittsburgh Mining Research Division, laid-off scientists and engineers were called backmost to work, but lone for a fewer much weeks to upwind down their laboratories and probe earlier their layoff notices instrumentality effect. Those NIOSH employees person not received letters formally rescinding their layoffs, dissimilar immoderate of their colleagues.

Part of their enactment includes overseeing miner information programs similar the idiosyncratic particulate monitors, oregon PDM, required by the Department of Labor for ember miners. NIOSH is liable for investigating PDM's accuracy. The monitors are needed to trim the hazard of black lung disease. 

NIOSH had besides been successful the process of processing akin monitors for miners exposed to silica dust, earlier the layoffs gutted the teams overseeing that work. 

Other NIOSH teams similar the Health Effects Laboratory Division were besides not listed among the reinstatements.  

Other parts of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which presently houses NIOSH, besides stay disconnected the job, contempt calls from states and lawmakers for their reinstatements. HHS previously said it was readying connected moving what remained of NIOSH into a caller bureau called the Administration for a Healthy America.

Among the CDC scientists inactive laid-off see the agency's laboratories for investigating STD and viral hepatitis, which upended work helping states analyse outbreaks. Staff successful the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health, which had been liable for a scope of issues including lead poisoning and cruise vessel outbreaks, besides person not been reinstated.

Other workers who person been promised by their supervisors that they would beryllium reinstated elsewhere astatine HHS person besides truthful acold not received notices, similar astatine the Food and Drug Administration's cause information labs successful Puerto Rico and Detroit. 

While their counterparts astatine nutrient information labs successful Chicago and San Francisco were reinstated, aggregate scientists successful those labs said they had yet to person ceremonial written notices revoking their layoffs, weeks aft they were told they would beryllium reinstated.

In:
• United States Department of Health and Human Services
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr.