10-04-2025
Laid-off NIOSH workers continue protests for jobs and safety of U.S. workers
MORGANTOWN, (WBOY) — A group of protesters gathered near the NIOSH facility in Morgantown Wednesday afternoon after nearly 200 workers were laid off from the facility last week.
Protesters marched along Chestnut Ridge Road from the office of U.S. Representative Riley Moore to the NIOSH building near the WVU Health Sciences Campus and Ruby Memorial Hospital.
Protesters said that they are trying to bring people's attention to the issue of the lay-offs and that all the research and data collection from the Morgantown NIOSH Campus has been stopped.
'Everybody wants to cut waste, fraud and abuse, I am 100% behind that. NIOSH is not waste, fraud and abuse. You know, the work we do here at NIOSH helps protect American workers, and this is important stuff, and it feels like this work has just been thrown away without giving much thought to it, and that seems a tremendous shame to me,' laid-off NIOSH Biomedical Engineer Bill Lindsley said.
PHOTOS: Protesters gather near Morgantown NIOSH after layoffs
Many of the laid-off workers carried signs criticizing the cuts to jobs in mining health resources and coal mine safety research. Protestors also said that the protests are not just about the layoffs, but about the safety of coal miners and the U.S. workforce's safety in general.
'If we find Black Lung Disease in a miner, we can remove them from further exposure or reduce their exposure if they have evidence of Black Lung,' laid-off NIOSH Research Epidemiologist and Preston County resident Scott Laney said. 'Now we can't send the letters out to the miners telling them they have the right to transfer if they do have black lung. So, this is going to continue to progress this disease in these miners.'
The Morgantown NIOSH facility had several hundred employees before the downsizing, and now only has about a dozen that are still employed.
'It is devastating because the research will just go away, I was telling my mom, she's a retired teacher, I said 'when you have a substitute teacher come in and take over, you hand over your curriculum, we have nothing to hand over, it's just going to stop,'' laid-off NIOSH Research Epidemiologist Cammie Chaumont Menendez said.
Laid-off researchers at the protests said that there is data sitting on their desks at the NIOSH office not being analyzed that could benefit many Americans. Also, among the protesters were representatives from the American Federation of Government Employees.
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