Dozens of NIH workers in RTP received layoff notices this week. Some were then asked back.
.jpg "A sign outside the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.")
On Tuesday, a few dozen National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences employees in Research Triangle Park learned in an email that their positions would be terminated, effective June 2.
The layoffs were part of a sweeping “reduction-in-force” action, or RIF, that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last week would affect roughly 10,000 positions across multiple agencies.
“This overhaul is about realigning HHS with its core mission: to stop the chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote Tuesday on X. “It’s a win-win for taxpayers, and for every American we serve.”
More than 40 NIEHS workers received a layoff notice according to Edith Lee, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 2923. “Many of us have never experienced anything like mass layoffs in our entire federal career,” she said. “It is a difficult time.”
But on April 2, some of the laid-off NIEHS employees in Durham received a second email, also reviewed by The N&O, informing them that “NIH leadership has authorized your immediate return to work.” The message said their reduction-in-force notice was still active, but that NIH leaders were “actively working on a long-term solution” to their employment.
Approximately 14 workers received this second message, Lee said. Some held administrative roles while others who were asked to return worked in the agency’s warehouse. Lee said she hopes those who received the follow-up message will be able to keep their jobs.
HHS did not confirm how many NIEHS employees received the reduction-in-force email this week, or how many subsequently received the message regarding their return. But other federal health workers who received layoff notices this week have also been asked to come back. On Thursday, Kennedy told reporters that around one in five of the 10,000 HHS employees received reduction-in-force notifications in error — about 2,000 workers.
“Personnel that should not have been cut, were cut,” he said, according to CBS News. “We’re reinstating them. And that was always the plan. Part of the DOGE, we talked about this from the beginning, is we’re going to do 80% cuts, but 20% of those are going to have to be reinstated, because we’ll make mistakes.”
The neuroscience news outlet The Transmitter reported some layoff notices were incorrectly sent to National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke staff due to a coding error.
NIEHS studies human-environmental reactions to promote public health. Among 27 NIH institutes and centers, it is the only one headquartered outside greater Washington, D.C. It was an early tenant of Research Triangle Park in the 1960s and currently shares a Durham campus with the Environmental Protection Agency.
The RTP office currently has around 680 full-time employees, according to information Lee has access to in her capacity as the division’s union president. In February, the Trump administration laid off around 25 early-career NIEHS workers in an initial step to shrink the size of the federal government.
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This story was originally published April 4, 2025 at 4:40 PM with the headline "Dozens of NIH workers in RTP received layoff notices this week. Some were then asked back.."
