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United Mine Workers of America President Cecil Roberts and members of the American Federation of Government Employees will demonstrate outside U.S. Department of Health and Human Services headquarters over recent staffing reductions at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Washington on Thursday.
Those include mining research teams based in Pittsburgh and Spokane, Washington.
Thanks to a federal judge’s ruling last week, the NIOSH Coal Worker Health Surveillance Program was restored. That team screens coal miners for black lung disease.
U.S. District Judge Irene Berger ordered HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to restore the program, but not others under NIOSH.
Brendan Demich, chief steward for AFGE Local 1916 in Pittsburgh, says black lung is only one of many dangers facing miners.
“There’s so many things, from fires, overexertion, slips, trips and falls, struck by machines,” he said. “There’s a lot that can hurt and kill a miner.”
Demich’s team studies ways to make mines safer and mine disasters more survivable. He received a termination notice last month.
The UMWA has joined a lawsuit in federal court to reverse all of the NIOSH cuts, including Demich’s work in Pittsburgh.