Health and Safety Is on the Chopping Block and We’re Fighting Like Hell

The Trump Administration attacked the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) on April 1, cutting more than 90 percent of the agency’s workforce, including me.

NIOSH is the backbone of worker safety. It’s the small agency you’ve never heard of that has probably saved your life. The agency conducts vital research—testing respirators, certifying protective equipment, investigating health hazards, and providing crucial data to workers and unions.

This is not just a budget cut. It is a direct, calculated assault on the working class. Today is Workers' Memorial Day, the day when we honor the workers who die every year from workplace injuries and illnesses. At a time when thousands of workers across the country are losing their lives due to their jobs each year, the government has chosen to gut the very agency responsible for protecting us.

For just $2.20 per worker per year, NIOSH ensures that we don’t have to choose between a paycheck and our health. That’s one of the best deals the working class ever got from the federal government. Yet, they’re calling us wasteful.

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What they are really attacking is the foundation of worker protections. Without NIOSH, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) loses the research needed to develop new occupational health regulations. Without our expertise, unions lose access to critical hazard evaluations. And without us, the bosses get a free pass to keep workers in unsafe conditions.

This gutting of NIOSH isn’t just a loss for federal employees—it’s a blow to every worker in the country. It harms the research on cancer prevention for firefighters, on preventing workplace violence, on the the development of exposure limits for new chemicals used in industry.

BROAD ATTACKS

This is part of a broader attack on our rights, our safety, and our dignity as workers. Just days before this assault on NIOSH, Trump signed an executive order aiming to strip union rights from nearly 1 million federal workers.

But don’t expect us to quietly mourn this loss and move on. The billionaires may have the money, but we have the power. And when workers come together, there is no force on this earth more powerful than our collective action.

Now is the time for the labor movement to step up—not just with statements or letters, but with bold, strategic action. We need to disrupt business as usual. We must stand together to defend not just NIOSH, but all of the institutions that protect and support workers.The NIOSH employee unions are fighting back, but we need our union siblings from public and private sector unions to stand with us.

This is a crossroads for the labor movement. We have a choice: we can let this moment pass as another casualty in the long war on workers, or we can make it a turning point. We can turn the gutting of worker safety into a rallying cry to fight back—because this fight is about every worker who has ever punched in and asked, Will I make it home tonight?

Micah Niemeier-Walsh is vice president of AFGE Local 3840 at NIOSH.