Nearly all of the remaining staff at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health were laid off Friday, multiple officials and laid-off employees told CBS News, gutting programs ranging from approvals of new safety equipment to firefighter health.
Much of the work at NIOSH, an arm of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had already stalled after an initial round of layoffs on April 1 at the agency ordered by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
New requests for investigations of firefighter injuries and workplace health hazards had already stopped being accepted. A CDC plan to help Texas schools curb the spread of measles infections was also scrapped due to the layoffs.
NIOSH was started in 1970 as part of the same law that created another federal agency called the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA. In addition to its own voluntary recommendations for employers, NIOSH produces research to inform OSHA’s regulations and enforcement.
NIOSH employees receiving layoff notices late Friday included some workers for the World Trade Center Health Program, miner safety, and firefighter health programs. Some workers for those programs had been asked to temporarily return to work for another month or two, after pleas from members of Congress.
Among the layoffs to NIOSH’s World Trade Center Health Program were nurses and scientists, two CDC officials said. Staff dealing with enrollment, member services and other administrative duties were also cut.
CBS News
Layoff notices received by workers Friday were almost identical to those received in the initial round of Kennedy’s cuts, which said that their duties “have been identified as either unnecessary or virtually identical to duties being performed elsewhere in the agency.”
The main difference with Friday’s layoff notices was the date they take effect: workers are being put on leave until an official separation from service on July 2, instead of in June.
The layoffs also stopped work at the agency’s National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory. This NIOSH division had been the government body tasked with vetting safety equipment like N95 masks and breathing devices used by emergency workers.
The laboratory’s respirator approval program had been in the middle of processing around 100 applications for personal protective equipment, one laid-off official said.
Stalled work includes changes needed to meet new standards issued by the National Fire Protection Association for this year. No equipment is currently certified to meet those standards, nor has the agency been able to issue refunds to application fees paid for by manufacturers.
Efforts to spot and warn of counterfeit personal protective equipment was also halted due to the layoffs, officials said.
“Millions of workers across various sectors – including healthcare, construction, and emergency services – depend on NIOSH-approved respirators. Without these approvals, their safety is compromised, leading to potential illness, injury, or even death,” laid-off employees wrote in a letter shared with CBS News.
HHS responds to NIOSH layoffs
HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday, asking what would happen to the agency’s work now that most of its teams had been eliminated. The department had previously said that NIOSH would be absorbed into a new agency called the Administration for a Healthy America.
In a post Saturday on X, the department said that firefighter programs were still a top priority and that as “the agency continues to streamline operations, the essential services provided by NIOSH will remain fully intact and uninterrupted.”
The department also claimed no CDC employees had been terminated on Friday and only a “required notice was sent to NIOSH employees, following the agreed-upon standard process with the union.”
Laid-off NIOSH workers told CBS News that the department’s post was misleading, since workers represented by unions were still on the job until Friday, when they received letters from HHS informing them of the layoffs and that they would be locked out of the agency’s buildings.
That capped a process which started in late March, after unions received a notice saying that most NIOSH employees could be cut by the end of June. In the past, unions could use that time to negotiate with the department, allowing employees to continue to work during talks that might mitigate or avoid a “reduction in force” of their members.
However, unions were unable to initiate negotiations with Kennedy’s department to head off the layoff notices Friday. An executive order issued by President Trump ended collective bargaining with unions representing the CDC and some other agencies, which is now being challenged in court.