At least two-thirds of the staff at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, are expected to be laid off as part of a restructuring ordered by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., multiple federal health officials tell CBS News.
Around 873 staff are expected to be cut from NIOSH, multiple leaders within the agency were told in recent days, out of the 10,000 workers that are slated to be laid off from across the Department of Health and Human Services this year.
NIOSH was created by Congress in 1970 to study worker safety and health. Workplaces often turn to the agency to investigate outbreaks and injuries, like after the deadly fungal outbreak that shuttered a Michigan paper mill in 2023.
However, multiple officials said that new “health hazard evaluation” probes by NIOSH had been paused for several weeks under travel and communication restrictions imposed soon after the Trump administration took over.
Health officials bracing for deep cuts within NIOSH include workers at the agency’s Pittsburgh and Spokane offices, where some 200 staff — the vast majority of those working out of the locations — are expected to be impacted, according to a notice sent to their union.
Among the teams where “all employees” are expected to be impacted, according to the notice, are the office of NIOSH’s director; the National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory, which is tasked with vetting and approving N95 respirators among other personal protective equipment; as well as several branches dealing with miner safety and health.
The “probable effective date” for the cuts is June 30, according to the letter sent to the union. (Read the full letter below.)
Lilas Soukup, president of AFGE 1916, confirmed the union had been forwarded the notification from HHS on Monday, but said they had received little guidance from HHS on the details of the cuts.
HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the planned cuts.
Multiple federal health officials said that official notices to workers that they would be cut as part of a “reduction-in-force” have not yet been received, including at NIOSH.
While managers within several HHS agencies were told last week to expect notices to be emailed as soon as Friday, staff at several health agencies said none were received as of the close of business on Monday.
Managers say they have been largely left in the dark about the details of the cuts, and given little opportunity to provide input into the process.
NIOSH’s teams currently sit within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They oversee several programs authorized by Congress which are expected to be impacted, ranging from a national registry to study cancer rates in firefighters to a program to monitor and treat people sickened during the rescue and cleanup of the September 11th terror attacks.
Under the reorganization plan outlined by Kennedy last week, the reduced NIOSH would be combined into a new Administration for a Healthy America along with several other agencies, like the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Other offices set to be merged into AHA have also been warned to expect steep cuts, including the Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy.
Other changes at the CDC
Multiple Trump administration aides have been targeting a rapid implementation of the restructuring, with Trump officials telling career staff to lay out plans to implement Kennedy’s restructuring within weeks.
Several offices are expected to be merged into the CDC under the restructuring, ranging from staff working out of the department’s global affairs teams to most of the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, or ASPR.
ASPR oversees the nation’s pandemic stockpiles of vaccines, medications and personal protective equipment. It also runs several emergency preparedness and response efforts, including medical teams that are dispatched to respond to disasters.
As part of internal merger plans shared with CBS News by multiple health officials, ASPR’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, team would be cleaved off and moved elsewhere.
Among the pandemic preparedness projects funded by BARDA had been several studies of experimental COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. Past BARDA awards have funded the development of vaccines and treatments that were successfully deployed to fight other outbreaks, like the spread of mpox in 2022.
At least one of those studies, research by vaccine-maker Vaxart into a COVID-19 vaccine that could be taken by mouth, has been paused by the Trump administration.
Officials said they expect BARDA will likely be merged with the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health or ARPA-H, a different medical research agency.
Read the notification letter sent from HHS to the union about the job cuts:
