The Trump administration reinstated on Tuesday hundreds of employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who had been placed on administrative leave in April.
The employees are all staff members of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a C.D.C. unit charged with preventing work-related injuries.
“This moment belongs to every single person who refused to stay silent,” Micah Niemeier-Walsh, an industrial hygienist at NIOSH and the vice president of an American Federation of Government Employees union local that represents C.D.C. employees.
Last April, as part of the Health Department’s overhaul, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cut about 2,400 positions from the C.D.C. He placed about 90 percent of the roughly 1,000 employees of NIOSH on administrative leave, with layoffs set to become effective that June.
But a court order in late May halted the terminations, leaving the workers in limbo. Separately, pressure from some members of Congress led to the reinstatement of about 328 NIOSH employees, including those who provided services to survivors of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Late Tuesday afternoon, the administration brought back the remaining workers.
The reduction in force notice that employees received in April “is hereby revoked,” said the unsigned email from the Health Department, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. “You are not affected by the R.I.F. and remain employed in your position of record.”
Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, declined to explain the reason for the reinstatement or its timing.
“The Trump administration is committed to protecting essential services — whether it’s supporting coal miners and firefighters through NIOSH, safeguarding public health through lead prevention or researching and tracking the most prevalent communicable diseases,” Mr. Nixon said.
Some employees said the reinstatement was welcome news after nine months of not being allowed to work. But roughly 20 percent had found other jobs, resigned or retired while they waited for the situation to be resolved, some NIOSH employees said.
Many also relocated to other cities and may not be able to comply with the requirement to work at a physical office of the agency, one NIOSH staffer, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, said.
The C.D.C. is thought to have lost about one-third of its work force over the past year through layoffs, resignations and retirements. But errors and immediate reversals of some actions have made it difficult to ascertain exact numbers.
In October, the Health Department sent notices of layoffs to about 1,300 C.D.C. workers. The next day, it rescinded roughly half of those, saying the employees had been fired in error.
Apoorva Mandavilli reports on science and global health for The Times, with a focus on infectious diseases and pandemics and the public health agencies that try to manage them.
The post C.D.C. Brings Back Hundreds of Suspended Workplace Safety Employees appeared first on New York Times.
