Federal government reverses mass layoffs in effort to preserve vital program for local workers: 'I want to be cautiously optimistic'

Yahoo

20-05-2025

Trump administration layoffs in the Department of Health and Human Services were rolled back on April 29 after they imperiled a program that screens coal miners for black lung disease.
On June 2, though, the dozens of employees will be fired again, the Washington Post reported. Black lung is "a deadly and incurable disease caused by inhaling toxic coal dust."
The move puts the Coal Workers' Health Surveillance Program in limbo. It is administered by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"We have to have this function for the safety and health of our coal miners," Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-West Virginia, the country's second-leading producer of coal, told the Post.
The Post reported that coal miners contacted Capito to ask whether they would receive federal benefits from NIOSH.
The program dates to 1969 and grants coal miners free and confidential chest X-rays, according to the Post. If a worker is diagnosed with black lung, they can move to a safer area of a mine without losing pay and apply for covered treatment and medicine.
"This reinstatement does not include all impacted employees," Cathy Tinney-Zara, president of a union that represents NIOSH workers in Morgantown, West Virginia, said. "The focus of the recall appears to center on programs currently in the media spotlight — namely, the Coal Workers' Health Surveillance Program."
Hundreds of coal miners filed a lawsuit saying the administration violated the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act by firing the workers, per the Post. It asks for the NIOSH employees to be immediately reinstated.
Though coal mines are being phased out across the globe as countries transition to cleaner energy sources, President Donald Trump has issued executive orders to expand the industry. A global think tank said it "makes no sense, economic or otherwise."
And even if every coal plant in America were shuttered today, federally mandated health care for miners, including the black lung screening program, would have to continue well into the future.
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Clean energy sources such as solar and wind are cheaper than dirty coal, gas, and oil and don't produce the toxic planet-warming gases that are driving rising global temperatures and leading to health problems, biodiversity loss, and increasingly severe and frequent extreme weather. Coal plants also affect crop yields and pollute vital water sources.
"My [reduction in force] notice means that on June 2, I will be fired — that still hasn't changed," Noemi Hall, one of the NIOSH employees, told the Post. "I want to be cautiously optimistic, but I also know that there have been a lot of broken promises."
Another, Scott Laney, said he would "have to give up this noble fight to save this program and go find a job," calling it exceedingly daunting.
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