Trump cuts threaten safety training
Funding affects those in most dangerous jobs
By: Leah Douglas
Reuters
NEWBURYPORT, Maine - By the time Robbie Roberge spotted the fire consuming his boat's galley in August 2024, he knew he had just minutes to evacuate his beloved Three Girls fishing vessel, named for his daughters.
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As the flames spread, he helped his crew into safety suits, deployed a life raft and made a mayday call to alert nearby mariners and the U.S. coast Guard that he was abandoning ship more than 100 miles offshore.
..... Roberge, a commercial fisherman from South Portland, Maine,
learned how to handle such an emergency just three months earlier at a workshop held by Fishing Partnership Support Services, a nonprofit that has trained thousands of fisherman in safety practices.
..... On May 20, [2025] Roberge cut a fishing trip short to bring the six-men crew from his reaming boat, the Maria JoAnn, to another FPSS training in Newburyport, Massachusetts.
..... "I have years of experience, but not dealing with emergencies,' said Roberge, whose handling of the fire led to a successful rescue with no injuries. "I make it a point to be hear."
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Such safety trainings - aimed at fishermen, loggers, farmers and other workers in America's most dangerous jobs - could be scaled back or wound down entirely as soon as July, [2025] according to Reuters interviews with a dozen health and safety experts and organizations, as a result of President Donald Trump's drive to slash the federal government.
..... Those cuts have fallen heavily on the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that is a key funder of workplace safety training and search.
Loss could overburden federal marine rescue services
..... The Trump administration on April 1 [2025] terminated about 875 of the roughly 1,000 employees at NIOSH, including most of the staff who provide advice and support to a dozen Centers for Agricultural Safety and Health focused on fishing, farming and logging workers.
..... Although Trump in May [2025] reinstated about 300 NIOSH employees, they do not include the office overseeing the centers, according to data compiled by government workers unions.
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Reuters spoke to staff at seven of the centers who described, preparations to close down when their current funding cycles run out in the coming months.
.... J. Gleen Morris, director of the Southeastern Coastal Center for Agricultural Health and Safety at the University of Florida, said his team had already begun winding down work in anticipation of losing there NIOSH grant on September 29. [2025]
..... "We're shutting down the direct education to the workers, we're shutting down the search," she said.
..... NIOSH funding for the Alaska Marine safety Education Association's fisherman safety trainings could run out as soon a July 1, [2025] said executive director Leann Cyr.
..... FPSS also expects to lose NIOSH funding in September, [2025] potentially leading it to cut back on training, said Dan Orchard, the group's executive vice president.
..... The loss of the trainings could put more burden on federal marine rescue services when fisherman face emergencies at sea, said John Roberts, an FPSS instructor who spent 31 years in the Coast Guard doing search and rescue.
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"The return on investment of the government is huge," he said. "If they give us this money to do this training, it's going to lessen how much money has to be spent to rescue the untrained."
..... Asked to comment on the NIOSH job cuts, an HHS spokesperson said: "the work will continue. HHS supports America's farmers , fishermen, and logging workers."
..... Heath Secretary Robert F, Kennedy Jr., said in March [2025] that the staff reductions are necessary to reduce bureaucracy and improve efficiency and that NIOSH would be combined with other sub-agencies into a new Administration for a Healthy America.
Highest mortality rates on the job
..... The nation's 442,000 fishing, farming and logging workers make up just a fraction of America's workforce, but they have the highest fatal injury rate of any U.S. occupation - 24.4 per 100,000 workers in 2023, or seven times the national average, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
..... These workers do dangerous tasks from rural outposts where it might take hours to receive medical care.
..... Tait fatality rate has decreased over the last 20 years, BLS data shows, with advances in mechanization and tightening federal regulation, Safety research and training supported by the centers have helped improve outcomes as well, said Matt Keifer, professor emeritus of occupations safety at the University of Washington, who has worked for two of the centers.
..... Reuters could not verify the total number of workers trained by all of the centers, but the Northeast Center for Occupational Helaht and Safety in Cooperstown, New York, trained more than 5,600 workers in 2024, said director Julie Sorensen.
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Some industry groups offer safety training without federal funding, like the Professional Logging contractors of the Northeast, which hosts 11 annual trainings on equipment and worksite safety, according to executive director Dana Doran,
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In addition to worksite risks, the NIOSH-funded centers and programs often tackle mental health challenges, drug addictions and diet-related disease.
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In the fishing sector, for instance, opiate addiction is a significant enough concern that fishermen at the FPSS training were taught to administer the overdose reversal drug Narcan.
..... Staff at the Great Plains Center for Agricultural Health at the University of Iowa have trained rural health care providers on risk farmer might fact, like hearing loss form exposure to loud noises, said director T. Renee Anthony.
..... Erika Scott, deputy director of the Northeast center, set up mobile helaht clinics at logging sites with the PLC to research high rates of hypertension among the state's 3,0000 loggers.
..... It took years to convince loggers of the importance of public health research, said Doran.
..... "We're built that trust together. And that trust will potentially be lost," Doran said.