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Dems demand answers on workforce safety cuts

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Health Care

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The Big Story

Dems demand answers on workforce safety cuts

The top Democrats on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce want answers from the Department of Health and Human Services about staff cuts at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)

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NIOSH, which is housed within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is a research agency focused on the study of worker safety and health.

“As news reports circulate about staffing cuts at CDC, in addition to a host of reports about stalled contract and grant payments throughout the federal government, we need a focused accounting on the cost to NIOSH overall so that we can assess the consequences for NIOSH’s capacity to get things done for American workers,” Reps. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) wrote to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr in a letter first shared with The Hill.

Committee staff said they heard reports that at least a dozen people in the agency were fired as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to drastically shrink the size of the federal government.

The letter asked Kennedy for a specific accounting of the number of NIOSH staff who have been terminated since Trump took office, as well as any grants or contracts that have been stopped.

The fear is losing out on institutional knowledge, which is fairly limited in a field like occupational safety and health, committee staff said, as well as a lack of capacity for the agency to do its job effectively.

“Everybody that goes to work for a living benefits from the work that NIOSH does,” a committee staffer said.

 

Welcome to The Hill’s Health Care newsletter, we’re Nathaniel Weixel, Joseph Choi and Alejandra O'Connell-Domenech — every week we follow the latest moves on how Washington impacts your health.

 

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