A group of federal workers rallied Downtown Tuesday to protest the ongoing government shutdown and layoffs by the Trump administration.
Local employees from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, the EPA, the Veterans Administration, and other government offices held signs and chanted outside Cincinnati's federal building on Main Street.
Brenda Jones retired from NIOSH earlier this year amid drastic reductions in workforce there by the Trump administration. She said she joined the rally because she's concerned about her former coworkers and a future without the occupational safety work the agency does.
"When you cut research, heaven help us, that's all I've got to say. Because it's very, very, very serious."
Prior to the Trump administration, Cincinnati had roughly 300 NIOSH employees working on research related to worker safety. The administration cut NIOSH's 1,100 employees nationwide by more than 90% in May, then reversed about 300 of those cuts. Only a small handful are still working in Cincinnati after the shutdown, union representatives say.
"Fully two-thirds of our staff haven't been allowed to work for about half the year while efforts to get rid of them are underway," NIOSH health researcher and American Federation of Government Workers steward Gary Roth told the crowd. "This is the shuttering of entire offices and programs doing research into some of the most dangerous jobs and hazards facing American workers."
Union representatives who work for the EPA and Veterans Administration also made remarks. Their Cincinnati offices haven't seen major furloughs due to the shutdown yet.
The shutdown began Oct. 1 due to Congress' failure to pass a budget for the federal government. Republicans want to pass a spending plan that preserves cuts to Medicaid made over the summer and doesn't include an extension of subsidies for some people buying health insurance on markets set up by the Affordable Care Act. The spending reductions are a way to partially offset tax cuts.
Democrats, however, want those health care cuts rolled back and have said they’ll refuse to pass a budget without restoration of Medicaid funding and extension of ACA subsidies.
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