Cecil Roberts, the West Virginian who is president of the United Mine Workers union, wound up on the telephone recently with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to express his position that the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health is essential.
Roberts told about the call during a stemwinder to NIOSH supporters during a rally in Washington, D.C., striding in front of dozens of people who gathered.
“The entire Kennedy family had a love for coal miners and a deep respect for coal miners. But they say every family has got somebody that doesn’t follow the trend, right? I’m the one person here that has spoken to Secretary Kennedy, kind of by accident,” Roberts told the crowd.
Roberts told the NIOSH rallygoers that in a call with Kennedy he was able to express his passion about the importance of maintaining NIOSH — but he wasn’t certain about the receiving end.
“I got a message across to him,” Roberts said in an interview after his speech, “but I don’t know if he tried to do anything with it or not.”
‘What’s happening here was wrong’
The NIOSH Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program studies respiratory disease in miners and carries out free, confidential black lung screenings. NIOSH also conducts research to prevent work-related injuries and illnesses, particularly in coal mining through strategies to control dust, improve ventilation, and reduce other respiratory hazards.
After Kennedy’s Health and Human Services agency announced on March 27 a restructuring in line with the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency initiatives, that resulted in hundreds of reduction in force notifications at the National Institute of Safety and Health agency in Morgantown.
Kennedy said NIOSH would be one of several agencies being reorganized into the Administration for a Healthy America.
“Over time, bureaucracies like HHS become wasteful and inefficient even when most of their staff are dedicated and competent civil servants,” Kennedy said at the time.
“This overhaul will be a win-win for taxpayers and for those that HHS serves. That’s the entire American public, because our goal is to Make America Healthy Again.”
Senator Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., has been pushing Kennedy to restore the jobs. The senator, who voted to confirm Kennedy, has made her own calls to the cabinet secretary and sent a formal letter pushing for a return of employees and the work at NIOSH.
It was Capito who connected Roberts with Kennedy, both the senator and the union leader said last week.
“She just got off the phone with him when this first happened and he said to her ‘Is there somebody from the union I could talk to?'” Roberts said in an interview after last week’s rally.
“So she called me immediately, and I said ‘Well, I know somebody from the union who would be happy to talk to him.’ And I called him, didn’t get through the first time. Second time I tried, he answered. And I started telling him what’s happening here was wrong.”
Roberts said the cabinet secretary responded by saying something like, “Well, they say they’re taking care of that somewhere else.”
Roberts responded by asking “Who’s ‘they?’ I don’t know who ‘they’ is.”
The union president told the crowd, “He didn’t know who ‘they’ was.”
Roberts said the call then ended with Kennedy saying he had to go.
“That was the end of it,” Roberts said. “He didn’t want to carry on an additional conversation.”
Capito connection
Capito, in a briefing with West Virginia reporters last week, told a similar story about how the call was initiated between Roberts and Kennedy.
“I’ve been very active in making the administration very aware that the NIOSH cuts that were initially announced could not stand. We’re losing core health and safety for our workers’ missions. And the first thing I did was pick up the phone and call Secretary Kennedy,” Capito said in response to a MetroNews question.
As Capito described to the secretary the functions of NIOSH and how critical the workplace safety focus is to West Virginia workers, “he said ‘Do you have somebody with coal experience that I can talk to?
“I said ‘heck yeah,’ and the next thing I did was call Cecil Roberts. And I said ‘Will you call him and frame this for him from our coal miners lens?’ because nobody can do it better than Cecil can.”
Earlier this month, Kennedy confirmed the return of 110 workers to various roles at NIOSH in Morgantown. The Respiratory Health Division, Division of Safety Research and National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory were brought back. More than a hundred more workers have not returned.
Capito and other Senators again pushed the cabinet secretary to restore more jobs at NIOSH during a Senate subcommittee budget hearing last week where Kennedy testified.
“While your action last week was a good first step, there are other divisions within NIOSH with specialized staff who conduct essential, unique work,” Capito told Kennedy.
“I support the president’s vision to right size our government, but as you and I have discussed, I do not think eliminating NIOSH programs will accomplish that goal. I encourage you to look closely at all of NIOSH’s offices and bring back additional critical staff.”
The senator’s Democratic counterpart on the committee, Democrat Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, also pushed Kennedy on the issue.
“You are cutting programs and firing staff with no plan and no understanding of what the department you are leading even does for the American people, and that’s why you had to rehire staff working on the World Trade Center Health Program and screening coal miners for black lung disease,” Baldwin said.
“You fired everyone — and now you want to take credit for hiring them back? That’s not how this works. Congress provided over $360 million on a bipartisan basis for NIOSH.”
Roberts: ‘We’ve got a stake in this’
In front of the Hubert H. Humphrey Federal Building in Washington, D.C., Roberts praised Capito’s efforts to restore an agency that both consider critical to coal miner safety.
“I think she’s worked hard on this; some people don’t agree with me on this, but I give credit where credit’s due,” Roberts said.
“I don’t mean to be political here, but President Trump doesn’t like anybody disagreeing with him. First thing that comes out of his mouth is ‘I’ll primary that person if they don’t straighten up.’ It doesn’t bother him at all.”
The UMWA leader continued, “She’s been public about this — that this laying off of all these people is wrong, that they ought to be brought back and that they perform a vital function for the coal miners of our state.”
The continued fight for the jobs supporting workplace safety, he said, will require consistent pressure. Roberts was joined by other members of the United Mine Workers, who stood alongside union steelworkers and members of the American Federation of Government Employees at the rally.
“That’s what being in a union is all about. It’s not just your union, it’s everybody’s fight, and you join with everybody to give a greater leverage,” he said.
“But we’ve got a stake on this, and the stake is whether coal miners will be able to come to work every day and not be sick.”