US worker safety agency notifies employees of firings

By Valerie Volcovici

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Trump administration sent termination notices late on Friday to employees of a worker health and safety agency that provides research and services for coal miners, firefighters and others, despite appeals by a lawmaker from Trump's Republican Party to preserve its programs.

Employees of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health received reduction-in-force notices that said the job losses were necessary to reshape the workforce of the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a copy of the notices reviewed by Reuters.

United Mine Workers of America International President Cecil E. Roberts on Saturday condemned the NIOSH firings in a statement, calling them an "attack on the very foundation of worker safety."

He said they included the dismantling of an agency division that oversees programs protecting miners and other workers from black lung disease and other respiratory illnesses.

Roberts vowed the union would "fight tooth and nail" to restore the programs.

Nearly all agency employees were placed on administrative leave in February, but around 40 who worked on coal-mining and firefighter safety were asked to return temporarily to work several days ago, the union for the agency's employees said. At least two of those employees have now been notified of termination.

U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia, had lobbied Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to restore the programs, including the coal-focused work of its Morgantown, West Virginia, office.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment after regular business hours.

A spokesperson earlier this week said the agency's functions would join the new Administration for a Healthy America, alongside multiple agencies, part of plans by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to reshape federal public health agencies. It was not clear whether any of the terminated employees would be transferred elsewhere.

Reuters reported last month that the halting of NIOSH's key services ended vital health and safety programs for coal miners, such as mobile health and lung screenings, and a program to relocate miners afflicted with black lung disease to less dusty parts of a mine.

There has been a resurgence of black lung disease in the last decade, including among young coal miners. At the same time, President Donald Trump has led a high-profile campaign to revive coal mining and use, which had been declining in the U.S.

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Edmund Klamann and Aurora Ellis)

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