Nearly all of the unionized employees at two federal facilities dedicated to workplace safety research in Cincinnati are on immediate administrative leave and will be terminated, union representatives say.
The cuts represent a significant portion of the facilities' workforce.
American Federation of Government Workers Local 3840 Vice President Micah Niemeier-Walsh said National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health employees received notice at 6:30 p.m. Friday from the Trump administration that they wouldn't be able to return to their worksites effective immediately, and will be let go July 2. She said the cuts mirror those at NIOSH facilities across the country.
"It's about 93 percent of NIOSH [nationally] and about 97 percent of the Cincinnati bargaining unit," she said. "So it's effectively shutting down the agency."
NIOSH has two offices in Cincinnati — Pleasant Ridge's Alice Hamilton Laboratory for Occupational Safety and Health, and Linwood's Robert A. Taft Occupational Safety and Health Laboratory. About 400 employees in total are roughly equally distributed between the two.
NIOSH is responsible for research and recommendations aimed at preventing workplace illness and injury.
Union steward Hannah Echt told WVXU in April the Cincinnati offices have a variety of workers.
"We evaluate if hazards exist in a workplace and recommend ways to reduce hazards," she said. "We also have epidemiologists, we have health communications people, we have IT specialists, administrative staff who support our research and our projects."
Other workers at NIOSH in management positions will be terminated June 2. They were put on administrative leave April 1. That's when some unionized employees were first notified their jobs were in jeopardy, leading to protests at Cincinnati's NIOSH facilities.
The Trump administration has said widespread job cuts are necessary in the federal workforce to save taxpayer funds and to make the federal government more efficient. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offices in Cincinnati have already seen some of those cuts.
The cuts to NIOSH are part of larger restructuring under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has indicated the department will cut roughly 20,000 of its 82,000 employees and consolidate its 28 departments to 15.
Leaders with HHS have pledged that the worker safety initiatives NIOSH carries out will continue under a new department called the Administration for a Healthy America even after the workforce reductions. But Niemeier-Walsh and other union leaders dispute this.
"If you go to the NIOSH website and you look at some of our services, there's a big banner that says, 'due to the reductions in force, these programs are not functional.' "
A visit to NIOSH's pages for its National Firefighter Registry for Cancer and Health Hazards Evaluations services shows banners advising the programs aren't active. The former program helps firefighters who have developed potentially job-related cancers. The latter program helps employers, employees and unions identify and mitigate workplace health hazards.
Labor leaders and their supporters will hold a demonstration outside the Pleasant Ridge NIOSH facility at 5 p.m. to protest the cuts.