Federal workers in Pittsburgh’s South Hills have apparently been caught up in nationwide layoffs involving 10,000 people, with staff at a federal facility focused on mine safety receiving lay-off notices Tuesday.
About 200 members of American Federation of Government Employees Local 1916, a union representing federal workers, received emails Tuesday morning informing them of a “reduction in force.” Union workers’ last day will be June 30. According to AFGE Local 1916 president Lilas Soukup, nonunion workers were let go Tuesday morning.
Soukup said union contract protections could give some workers the option to relocate elsewhere. But she said details have been hard to come by.
“It's just a messed-up affair, really,” she told WESA.
The employees worked at the Bruceton Research Center, which houses the Pittsburgh offices of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a research agency focused on worker health and safety. Employees for that agency — and others focused on mine safety — conduct research and develop and test respirators used to protect miners and first responders.
A dozen affected workers and their supporters rallied outside the Pleasant Hills facility Tuesday, calling for the government to protect federal workers — and in turn protect mine workers, doctors, and firefighters.
“This is a large-scale attack on workers everywhere, on occupational safety, on people's ability to be able to go to a dignified job and know they're coming home to their family [when the work day is over],” said Brendan Demich, an engineer and chief union steward for CDC workers in Pittsburgh.
NIOSH employees believe the layoffs will gut the worker safety agency.
“Who is going to do this research [when NIOSH workers are dismissed at the end of June]?” Demich asked. The union has received little communication from federal higher ups; per the workers’ understanding, no federal agency will be certifying respirators after NIOSH is eliminated.
That’s sparking concerns for the companies who rely on government approval to get their products to market. AFGE 1916 vice president Linda Chasko said since news of the layoffs broke, she’s fielded anxious calls from colleagues at mask manufacturers awaiting the results of NIOSH testing before they can sell their products in the U.S.
“It's going to affect every industry. It's not just going to affect the mining industry. And it's gonna affect not just the United States, it's gonna affect other countries worldwide,” Chasko said.
The same companies rely on NIOSH research to keep their employees safe, Demich said. The agency has been responsible for creations that protect workers at hydraulic fracking sites from silica dust, a known carcinogen.
For-profit companies “really need us to do that research for them,” he said. “They can't do that themselves. They have to make money.”
Democrats and labor leaders were quick to attack the layoffs.
Darrin Kelly, who heads the Allegheny-Fayette Central Labor Council, called news of the layoffs “another disgusting display of completely disregarding every aspect of worker safety in this country. Am I surprised by this? Absolutely not. But am I sick that people would completely disregard worker safety in this day and age? It should be appalling to every hard-working American.”
Kelly, a Pittsburgh firefighter himself, called Bruceton "the premiere research facility in mine safety and respirator protection everywhere. It affects everybody from miners to first responders, nurses and building trades."
In a statement, U.S. Rep. Summer Lee said the layoffs were “a direct attack on workers, on public health, and on the basic right of every person to come home safely to their family after a hard day’s work.”
“The research done at NIOSH doesn’t just live in a lab — it’s what ensures that the nurse caring for patients, the steelworker on the line, or the factory worker exposed to fine particulates can breathe safely and go home to their families,” Lee continued. “When you cut funding to the very people who ensure our [personal protective equipment] is effective and reliable, you’re telling the American people their safety doesn’t matter. You’re telling workers their lives are expendable. And that’s not just irresponsible — it’s wrong.”
The layoffs come early in the second term of President Donald Trump, who has campaigned as a champion of coal miners and others who work in the fossil-fuel industry. But workers at Tuesday’s demonstration were critical of what they say is a disconnect between the Trump administration’s rhetoric about boosting the industries while eviscerating the agencies meant to keep their workers safe.
The cuts “[put] the U.S. in a very odd situation where we're this industrialized nation, but, to my knowledge, we’ll be the only nation that doesn't have a branch of their government looking out for their miners in terms of doing safety and health research,” said mining engineer Connor Brown. If the sector is going to grow, “Those mines are going to need some support to keep those individuals that work in those mines coming back to their homes, coming back to their families.”
The facility’s roots date back to 1910, when the federal government established the Bureau of Mines in an effort to reduce fatalities in what was one of the most dangerous occupations for workers. The facility housed an experimental mine, and soon after it opened more than 1,000 spectators turned out to see a test explosion designed to determine whether coal dust was an explosion hazard in the absence of methane gas.
The local layoffs appear to have been part of a nationwide clear-cutting of federal Health and Human Services staff. Employees across the massive department began receiving notices of dismissal Tuesday in an overhaul ultimately expected to lay off up to 10,000 people. The notices came just days after Trump moved to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights at HHS and other agencies throughout the government.
The cuts include researchers, scientists, doctors, support staff and senior leaders, leaving the federal government without many of the key experts who have long guided U.S. decisions on medical research, drug approvals and other issues. NIOSH appears to have been among the hardest-hit centers, with more than 1,000 employees. NIOSH is based in Cincinnati but in addition to its workforce in Pittsburgh has offices in Spokane, Washington, and Morgantown, West Virginia.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a plan last week to remake the department, which, through its agencies, is responsible for tracking health trends and disease outbreaks, conducting and funding medical research, and monitoring the safety of food and medicine, as well as for administering health insurance programs for nearly half the country.
The layoffs are expected to shrink HHS to 62,000 positions, lopping off nearly a quarter of its staff — 10,000 jobs through layoffs and another 10,000 workers who took early retirement and voluntary separation offers. Many of the jobs are based in the Washington, D.C. area, but also in Atlanta, where the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is based, and in smaller offices throughout the country.
The Associated Press contributed.
