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.
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.
Now is the time for the labor movement to step up—not just with statements or letters, but with bold, strategic action.
Lambert here: I hate to say this, but “lol.” Adding, I hate to be cynical, but I’m hard-pressed to think of an example where any intitiative described as “bold” ever came to anything.
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 [AFGE Local 3840 at NIOSH] 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?
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