HHS revokes some layoff notices, including to 9/11 program

The Department of Health and Human Services formally revoked some layoff notices on Tuesday, multiple federal health officials told CBS News, restoring some staff at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration.

Tuesday’s letters to laid-off workers notifying them that their employment was being restored went a step further from some previous reinstatements touted by department officials, which often amounted only to a request for civil servants to continue working for a few more weeks to wind down or prepare to hand off their assignments.

“You previously received a notice regarding the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) upcoming reduction in force (RIF). That notice is hereby revoked,” read the letter received by some workers at the World Trade Center Health Program, which provides health care services to 9/11 first responders and survivors.

A move last week to cut 15 employees of the 9/11 program, as part of a larger wave of eliminations that gutted most of the work from the CDC’s National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, prompted outcry from New York lawmakers.  

In an interview with Fox News Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. denied cutting the World Trade Center Health Program or NIOSH, which he said are slated to be merged into a new agency called the Administration for a Healthy America.

“Those programs were not terminated, as the media has reported. But they’ve simply been consolidated into a place that makes more sense,” Kennedy said.

Some of the FDA’s laboratories also received notices Tuesday that they would be formally brought back to work as of Wednesday.

Employees of the FDA’s food safety labs in Chicago and San Francisco all received notices that their layoffs were being reversed, though cuts to probationary workers in the labs have so far not been walked back. 

Letters to those scientists told them that their previous layoff notices were “officially RESCINDED” and that they would be expected to return to work on Wednesday.

Not all of the workers that Kennedy or his department have promised to bring back to work have received notices restoring their jobs. 

Two other labs at the FDA — drug safety scientists in Puerto Rico and Detroit — have so far not received letters, multiple laid-off employees in the labs said. 

Employees of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health also remain off the job. Kennedy had said a month ago that he would restore the lead poisoning experts in the center, saying that some of the layoffs could have been mistakes.

HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment asking for more details on which teams were cut and which were being brought back.  

Tuesday’s move to reverse some layoffs at HHS comes days after the department laid off hundreds more employees at the National Institutes of Health, blindsiding staff who had survived the initial wave of cuts in April. 

Layoffs included staff at the National Cancer Institute, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Library of Medicine and Office of Research Facilities, two people said.

NIH employees were told that the additional cuts were prompted by a need to reinstate scientists while also meeting strict layoff quotas sought by the department.