Due to Elon Musk and his unaccountable DOGE, we are facing one of the largest mass firings of federal workers in history, including highly technical federal workers who keep us safe on the job.

More than a thousand workers in six states and Washington, D.C., have lost their jobs at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), the federal job safety research agency. By gutting this key organization, America’s workers will lose critical safety protections and more workers will get hurt. Every single NIOSH research center is being closed and the few staff remaining no longer have the resources to do their jobs.

Please call your member of Congress and demand they stand up for this critical health and safety agency and its workers against DOGE and the Trump administration.

Our message is simple: Stop the cuts to NIOSH and reinstate their workers. But here are some other details that may help during your call:

• Congress created NIOSH (pronounced nigh-osh) on a broad bipartisan basis.

• NIOSH is the only federal government agency that conducts research on worker safety and health, and gathers and analyzes the information to keep workers safe.

• NIOSH’s research and recommendations are relied on by workers and employers throughout the world.

• NIOSH conducted the key research for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Mine Safety and Health Administration regulations on asbestos, cotton dust, lead, bloodborne pathogens, silica and black lung, which have saved hundreds of thousands of workers’ lives.

• NIOSH also researches worker exposures to heat and wildfire smoke, workplace violence, back injuries and other chronic diseases, and state-of-the-art technologies that keep workers safe in mines.  

• NIOSH is responsible for approving all respirators, and combats fraud from imported counterfeit products, that keep America’s workers safe and protect U.S. manufacturing.

• NIOSH also oversees the World Trade Center Health Program to provide 9/11 responders and survivors medical monitoring and treatment, and a program to compensate energy workers exposed to deadly hazards from manufacturing, testing, and cleaning up nuclear weapons.

• Right now each year, more than 5,000 workers die from job injuries and 135,000 workers die from chronic occupational diseases. Millions more workers are injured.

• Ten percent of the recently announced Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) staff cuts come from NIOSH, even though that makes up a tiny part of the overall HHS budget.

• NIOSH centers being closed are in Pittsburgh; Morgantown, W.Va.; Cincinnati; Spokane, Wash.; Denver; Atlanta; and Washington, D.C.