The Associated Press is reporting thousands of employees within the U.S. Health and Human Services Department received layoff notices Tuesday. Some are with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which oversees health and safety for many workers, including coal miners.
Anita Wolfe worked 40 years at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, known as NIOSH.
“I shudder to think what’s gonna happen to some of our coal miners in the U.S.,” Wolfe said. “You know there’s gonna be no more monitoring of them for black lung disease. That has all been shut down.”
She retired in 2020, and while at NIOSH she directed the Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program, which screens for black lung disease. It was created by the 1969 Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, signed into law by President Nixon.
“And in that act it said ‘the first priority and concern of all in the coal mining industry must be the health and safety of its most precious resource, the miner,’” Wolfe said.
A spokesperson with the American Federation of Government Employees, the union that represents NIOSH workers, told Radio IQ “the cuts are extreme and will result in office closures, including the NIOSH office in West Virginia where more than 200 people are being laid off.”
Radio IQ reached out to the Department of Health and Human Services to confirm the numbers, but did not hear back.
In another blow to worker safety, the Mine Safety and Health Administration is slated to lose dozens of field offices, according to the Department of Government Efficiency website.
The United Mine Workers union issued a statement saying miners “deserve answers from the administration as to why it appears there is now a target on their backs.”
