By Anya Litvak
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
PITTSBURGH 鈥� Inside the Pittsburgh offices of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health on Cochran Mill Road, there are employees with no bosses.
The managers were put on administrative leave Tuesday morning. The leftover employees will meet the same fate in about a month.
In total, about 200 workers at the federal research facility learned on Tuesday that their positions were being eliminated as part of the federal overhaul of Health and Human Services.
鈥淚t鈥檚 basically the whole office,鈥� said Lilas Soukup, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1916, which represents NIOSH employees in Pittsburgh and a small contingent in Spokane, Wash.
Letters sent to NIOSH employees said the action was being taken to comply with President Donald Trump鈥檚 executive order to cut the federal workforce and the health agency鈥檚 鈥渂roader strategy to improve its efficiency and effectiveness to make America healthier.鈥�
Several people who lost their jobs Tuesday used the same word to describe how they felt: 鈥渂lindsided.鈥�
There are two main NIOSH functions at the South Park campus that the agency shares with the much larger staff of the National Energy Technology Laboratory. One is the mining safety research division, which works on ways to prevent any type of hazard, injury or fatality at mining sites. The other is the National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory, which certifies respirators ranging from N95 masks to full-face coverings worn by firefighters.
Both have been decimated by the cuts, said Brendan Demich, a general engineer in the mining division.
鈥淎 large number of the folks in Morgantown is also being [cut],鈥� he said.
In addition to Pittsburgh , NIOSH has research centers in Morgantown, W.Va. ; Cincinnati ; Denver ; Anchorage, Alaska ; Spokane, Wash. ; and Atlanta .
Mr. Demich, who recently took on the role of chief steward at Local 1916 when the previous steward took the buyout offered in Elon Musk鈥檚 鈥淔ork in the Road鈥� email, said workers and supervisors were following the same news stories as the public to glean their fate.
They learned from a news story last week that HHS was planning to cut about 10,000 positions. Then, another article said that would include more than 800 positions at NIOSH, which has a staff of about 2,100 including contractors.
HHS, now headed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced that it would create the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA), and will consolidate multiple agencies under that umbrella, including NIOSH.
On Monday, Local 1916 received a notice of an upcoming reduction in force that would impact 200 people with a 鈥減robable effective date鈥� of June 30.
Still, it wasn鈥檛 clear when the layoffs would be announced.
Managers and others who were placed on administrative leave on Tuesday were told their last day would be in early June. Union members, who were notified their last day would be June 30, are anticipating they will be put on administrative leave within the next 30 days.
Employees who were part of the bargaining unit arrived on site Tuesday to find their managers surrendering their badges and computers.
They spent the day in shock, Mr. Demich said, 鈥減acking up, trading intel, crying, hugging.鈥�
He wondered who would take care of the labs at the facility now that facility managers were no longer in the building. He also thought about his own research that wouldn鈥檛 come to fruition. Mr. Demich said he was working on a virtual reality mine training for mine rescuers. It was almost ready for prime time, he said, but its efficacy in the field would need to be studied and confirmed.
The Bruceton Research Center traces its storied history to 1910, after a series of horrific mine explosions and enactment of mine safety legislation that created the U.S. Bureau of Mines . In 1911, the Bureau of Mines leased 38 acres in Bruceton, where an experimental mine was constructed, which is still used for testing today.
That mine requires daily attention, Mr. Demich said, to ensure it鈥檚 being properly ventilated and that water is pumped out to prevent flooding.
In 1970, Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which created NIOSH and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. NIOSH conducted research and worker safety, which became the basis of recommendations to OSHA and MSHA, the Mine Safety and Health Administration. The National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory was established in 2001, at the request of Congress, to advance research and adoption of workplace protective equipment. This includes the masks worn by doctors in hospitals, the respirators that contractors wear on construction sites, and that firefighters use to protect themselves during calls.
The exposure limits that guide how long workers can be exposed to certain chemicals are established at NIOSH. One fired employee who worked on establishing these guidelines said on Tuesday that things have been strained since January, when the agency was severely limited in what it could publish or communicate to outside stakeholders. The employee, who asked for anonymity because they are on administrative leave but still a federal worker, wondered who would do the job of setting exposure standards with workers across NIOSH鈥檚 offices handicapped by such drastic layoffs.
Mr. Demich said his plan was to do everything in his power to bring attention to these cuts. Around 5 p.m. he walked out of his office and made his way to the entrance to Bruceton Research Center with a dozen other employees. They held signs that read 鈥淒efend NIOSH鈥� and 鈥淲ork should not feel like war.鈥�
漏 2025 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Visit .
Distributed by