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

The head of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health and a handful of teams at the agency had their layoff notices rescinded Tuesday, multiple officials say, and several worker safety programs that had been eliminated by layoffs last month are being restored.

Letters reversing the layoffs arrived in the inboxes of some NIOSH staff a day ahead of House and Senate hearings Wednesday with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. where he was expected to face questions about the layoffs.

Health officials and scientists being brought back to work include everyone in NIOSH's respiratory health division, division of safety research, division of compensation and analysis support and National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory according to an email obtained by CBS News.

"Secretary Kennedy has been working hard to ensure that the critical functions under NIOSH remain intact. The Trump Administration is committed to supporting coal miners and firefighters, and under the Secretary's leadership, NIOSH's essential services will continue as HHS streamlines its operations," HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in an email.

A handful of NIOSH staff working in the agency's World Trade Center Health Program previously had their layoffs reversed, after a second round of cuts at the agency earlier this month.

"While we celebrate with those who received a rescission letter from HHS, I am mindful that others did not. I am hopeful that we can continue to make the case for reinstating everyone at NIOSH," the agency's now-reinstated director, Dr. John Howard, wrote in the email.

The reinstatements mean that some NIOSH programs might soon be able to resume, after they were previously hobbled by the layoffs.

For example, the agency's National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory had been forced to suspend new approvals of equipment like new N95 respirators and protective gear for firefighters after the initial round of cuts on April 1. Investigations of workplace health risks through NIOSH's Health Hazard Evaluation program were also upended by the layoffs, but staff working in those probes have now been reinstated.

But many workers also remain effectively laid-off at the wide-ranging agency, which functions as the research and testing 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 back to work, but only for a few more weeks to wind down their laboratories and research before their layoff notices take effect. Those NIOSH employees have not received letters formally rescinding their layoffs, unlike some of their colleagues.

Part of their work includes overseeing miner safety programs like the personal dust monitors, or PDM, required by the Department of Labor for coal miners. NIOSH is responsible for testing PDM's accuracy. The monitors are needed to reduce the risk of black lung disease.

NIOSH had also been in the process of developing similar monitors for miners exposed to silica dust, before the layoffs gutted the teams overseeing that work.

Other NIOSH teams like the Health Effects Laboratory Division were also not listed among the reinstatements.

Other parts of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which currently houses NIOSH, also remain off the job, despite calls from states and lawmakers for their reinstatements. HHS previously said it was planning on moving what remained of NIOSH into a new agency called the Administration for a Healthy America.

Among the CDC scientists still laid-off include the agency's laboratories for investigating STD and viral hepatitis, which upended work helping states investigate outbreaks. Staff in the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health, which had been responsible for a range of issues including lead poisoning and cruise ship outbreaks, also have not been reinstated.

Other workers who have been promised by their supervisors that they would be reinstated elsewhere at HHS have also so far not received notices, like at the Food and Drug Administration's drug safety labs in Puerto Rico and Detroit.

While their counterparts at food safety labs in Chicago and San Francisco were reinstated, multiple scientists in those labs said they had yet to receive formal written notices revoking their layoffs, weeks after they were told they would be reinstated.