HR 987 opposes OSHA ergonomic standard

by Steve Vert

SBJ Contributing Writer

Legislation headed for a summer vote in the U.S. House of Representatives could have a big impact on the way many businesses do business in the future.

That's because the bill, HR 987, would force the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to put its plan for ergonomic regulation of the workplace on hold until a congressionally mandated, $1 million study of repetitive stress injuries by the National Academy of Sciences is completed in 2001.

"This is a textbook case of bad rulemaking," said the bill's author, 7th District Congressman Roy Blunt, after the bill cleared the Committee on Education and the Workforce in late June. While testifying before the committee in April, Blunt urged members to halt the implementation of what he called "experimental ergonomic rules."

"Every business owner in America should be concerned," Blunt added. "If this bill is passed, any business that has employees involved in manual handling operations could be forced to establish an ergonomics program. The standard would be triggered in almost any business where a single ergonomics injury is reported."

Blunt introduced the bill after OSHA released its ergonomics rule in mid-February. The draft proposal, available at

http://www.osha.gov

is designed to adjust the program a business would maintain to the number of repetitivestress injuries experienced by its employees.

According to OSHA, the rule would apply to all employers in general industry and as many as 5.5 million small businesses.

It would require employers to demonstrate management leadership, set up reporting systems and provide information so that employees could recognize and report problems.

Once a repetitive stress injury is reported, the rule would require an employer to analyze problem jobs, implement measures to eliminate hazards, make medical management available and retain injured employees' pay and benefits for up to six months.

OSHA justified the standard on ergonomics, which is defined as fitting the workplace to the worker, by pointing to previous studies by the NAS that established a clear relationship between stress-related injuries and work. And by insisting that U.S. companies lost more than 647,000 workdays in 1996 to stress-related injuries accompanied by as much as $20 billion a year in workers' compensation costs.

In addition to Blunt and the bill's 150 bipartisan cosponsors, major opposition has come from the National Coalition on Ergonomics, a group of more than 300 companies and associations nationwide.

"NCE's opposition can be distilled to one point," said NCE spokesman Al Lundeen. "Without sound science, any ergonomic regulation is inappropriate."

Part of the problem, Lundeen said, is that experts can't pinpoint the cause of stress-related injuries.

"A regulation that says an employer is responsible to answer questions unanswered by experts would be extremely difficult and enormously expensive," he said.

OSHA has estimated the cost to implement the rule at $3.5 billion, a figure most representatives of small business believe is significantly underestimated.

To drive home their point, opponents tout Department of Labor statistics showing the number of stress-related injuries decreased by 17 percent in the three years ending in 1997.

OSHA doesn't dispute the numbers, but in a recent speech, OSHA administrator Charles Jeffress told NCE members, "overexertion, repetition or other physical stress continue to be a major factor ... they consistently account for one-third of all injuries."

Local business-people, such as Lee Johnson, chief executive officer of Brittney Inc., a safety and environmental consulting firm with 850 clients in the United States and Puerto Rico, support Blunt's bill. They believe ergonomic efforts already under way account for much of the drop in stress-related injuries.

"Companies are spending big money to protect themselves and their workers from repetitive stress injuries," Johnson said."If you can make employees comfortable on the job you reduce turnover, cut workman's compensation insurance costs and increase the efficiency of the line."

He added, "No company can afford stress-related injuries. The cost of doing business will take care of employees."

Johnson also said he feared the new standard could cause jobs to be eliminated.

"A new standard might mean companies would look at using additional machines to replace workers," he said.

OSHA spokesperson Susan Fleming said despite opposition from Congress, OSHA is moving ahead with plans to implement its ergonomic standard.

"We've been working on this for 10 years," she said. "We have an incredible amount of evidence that shows this is a serious problem costing a lot of people a lot of money and a lot of pain."

And besides, Fleming said, the secretary of labor has indicated he will recommend the president veto Blunt's bill, should it be passed in its present form.

To facilitate public input on the proposed standard, OSHA is planning an outreach program including a written comment period and a series of public hearings.

"Right now we have a draft with a preamble that will be under internal review here for the next few weeks," Fleming said. "We plan to publish it in the Federal Register and on the Internet sometime in September. At that point we will announce the comment period and the dates for hearings."

Sites for the hearings haven't been determined, Fleming said, but added it was likely they would be held toward the first of next year, and at a minimum there would be, "one on each coast and one somewhere in the middle of the country."

Once public comments have been received and hearings completed, Fleming said, OSHA plans to publish a final ergonomics rule sometime in 2000.

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