OSHA's whistleblower staff went from 145 to 114. The 2027 budget takes it to 76.
Summary
The Department of Labor funded OSHA's Whistleblower Protection Program at $22.5 million and 114 staff for FY2026, per its own budget justification. Its FY2027 request cuts that to $16.7 million and 76 — pushing 38 positions and 24 of the 25 statutes the program enforces into a brand-new office — as complaints hit 3,352 in FY2025, above the six-year average of 3,027.
Follow the dollar
The Whistleblower Protection Program (WPP) was funded at $22,500,000 and 114 for FY2026, per the Department of Labor's FY2027 Congressional Budget Justification, which states its own request as a decrease from that enacted level. The FY2027 request asks for just $16,667,000 and 76 — a cut of $5,833,000 and 38 positions — to fund the program's core mission: investigating retaliation complaints under Section 11(c) of the OSH Act itself. The other 24 statutes 's whistleblower office currently enforces — covering consumer products, food safety, motor carriers, pipelines, nuclear facilities, railroads, aviation, and financial fraud, among others — would move to a newly created Department of Labor Office of Civil Rights (), along with the 38 positions and $5.8 million cut from 's line. is also slated to absorb 's existing Civil Rights Center and the remaining Vietnam Era Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act and Rehabilitation Act Section 503 contractor-compliance functions — the pieces left after the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs was eliminated by Executive Order 14173.
View data as table
| OSH Act cases (stays at OSHA) | $16.67M | 74% — 76 FTE requested |
|---|---|---|
| 24 other statutes (moves to OCR) | $5.83M | 26% — 38 FTE requested |
The same system, counted in people
The dollar cut tracks a longer staffing slide. As recently as 2023, 145 full-time employees staffed the Whistleblower Protection Program. By the FY2026 enacted level, that had already fallen to 114 — a 21% drop before the FY2027 request even takes effect. If the FY2027 request is enacted as written, the OSH-Act-only program that remains at would run on 76 : 47% fewer people than staffed the office in 2023, per the FY2026 and FY2027 Congressional Budget Justifications.
View data as table
| 2023 | 145 | FTE |
|---|---|---|
| FY2026 enacted | 114 | -21% vs. 2023 |
| FY2027 requested | 76 | -47% vs. 2023; -33% vs. FY2026 |
The department's own workload projections move the other direction. 's FY2026 budget justification put whistleblower case completions at 3,243 in FY2023, an estimated 3,000 for FY2025, and planned for just 2,574 in FY2026 — a target set below both prior years, at the same 114- staffing level the department had already budgeted. Completions were programmed to fall before the FY2027 staff cut was even proposed.
Complaints, meanwhile, are not falling. 's own whistleblower statistics page puts the FY2018-2023 average at 3,027 complaints docketed per year, ranging from 2,556 (FY2021) to 3,448 (FY2020). The FY2027 budget justification's prior-year accounting puts FY2025 receipts at 3,352 — above that six-year average, and arriving the same year the department proposed to shrink the office that investigates them by more than a third.
View data as table
| FY2018–23 average | 3,027 | complaints received per year |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | 3,352 | +11% vs. the six-year average |
The takeaway
- The office shrank before the cut was even proposed. Staffing fell from 145 in 2023 to 114 by the FY2026 enacted level — a 21% drop with no reorganization attached to it.
- The completion target was lowered, not the complaint count. planned to close 2,574 cases in FY2026, down from 3,243 in FY2023, at the same time complaints were running above their six-year average.
- The FY2027 request splits the program in two and shrinks the piece that stays. 38 of 114 positions move to a new Office of Civil Rights along with 24 of the 25 statutes the program enforces, leaving 76 — fewer than half of 2023's staff — to handle OSH Act retaliation cases alone.
Budget figures are enacted FY2026 levels and the FY2027 request as submitted, not final FY2027 appropriations, which Congress had not completed as of publication. Complaint and completion figures are drawn from the years each cited document reports and are not all on the same fiscal-year basis; each figure is labeled with its source year in the prose above.
Sources
- U.S. Department of Labor, 2027 Congressional Budget Justification, Employment Standards Administration / volume — Whistleblower Programs budget activity: FY2026 enacted funding and , the FY2027 request, the transfer of 38 and 24 statutes to the new Office of Civil Rights, and FY2025 complaints-docketed figures. dol.gov
- U.S. Department of Labor, 2026 Congressional Budget Justification, Employment Standards Administration / volume — Whistleblower Programs budget activity: 2023 staffing (145 ), FY2026 request context, and case-completion figures for FY2023, FY2025 (estimated), and FY2026 (planned). dol.gov
- U.S. Department of Labor, Whistleblower Protection Program, Whistleblower Statistics FY2018-FY2023 — annual complaints docketed by fiscal year and the six-year average. whistleblowers.gov
- Exec. Order No. 14173, Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity (Jan. 21, 2025) — eliminated the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, whose remaining VEVRAA and Rehabilitation Act Section 503 functions the new Office of Civil Rights absorbs alongside the transferred whistleblower caseload.
Comments
Always open. Logged-in readers can annotate paragraphs in place.
A worker who reports a food-safety violation, a securities fraud, a pipeline defect, or an unsafe cockpit and gets fired for it has one federal address to complain to: 's Whistleblower Protection Program. It is a small office — a few hundred people, at most — that enforces retaliation protections written into 25 different federal statutes. It is also an office the Department of Labor is proposing to cut by a third, in the same budget document that shows its caseload climbing.