HHS reinstates fired workers responsible for coal miner health protection

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reinstated nearly 200 workers who screen coal miners for black lung, an incurable progressive disease caused by long-term exposure to coal dust, following a federal judge's order Tuesday.  

U.S. District Judge Irene Berger issued a preliminary injunction halting the firings at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's (NIOSH) Coal Workers Health Surveillance Program. 

Berger ordered the "full restoration" of services for the program, which is congressionally mandated by the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969. The program offers health screenings for miners and allows researchers to identify disease trends across the nation. 

Miners who are diagnosed with black lung can transfer to a different part of the mine without a pay cut, under a provision called a Part 90 waiver.  

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday confirmed the workers had been rehired.  

"I reinstated 328 employees at NIOSH," Kennedy said during a House Appropriations Committee hearing. "A little over a third of them were in Morgantown, about a third were in Cincinnati and then the World Trade Center group, I also reinstated." 

The program’s employees were among the thousands of federal health workers put on administrative leave on April 1, with termination effective June 2, as part of HHS’s reorganization efforts. 

Berger found that there “is no dispute” that the congressionally mandated services are not currently being offered, “and there is no testimony or plan offered explaining how they will resume. The only reasoning for their actions put forth by the Defendants is an effort to streamline efficiencies.” 

The case is a class action lawsuit brought by a veteran coal miner named Henry Wiley who argued the terminations endangered him and other miners. 

Berger wrote if the dismissals were allowed to go forward, “thousands of miners will go without screening for black lung, and those with black lung will be deprived of access to the Part 90 transfer option.” 

Halting research that helps ensure effective, targeted and efficient preventative measures “harms the public both by increasing the prevalence of black lung and by increasing the costs of preventative measures and of treatment and benefits,” Berger wrote.