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Last year, the House approved the bill, which would require OSHA to wait for the results of the congressionally funded National Academy of Sciences study and ergonomics, a million dollar study I might mention. The Northup language ensures that OSHA will abide

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   Despite the significant scientific and economic questions about ergonomics in the workplace, OSHA continues to plow ahead, and the result of this can only be an arbitrary, unfair, and expensive mandate without the scientific knowledge to get it right.

   The health and safety of American workers is certainly a top priority of all Members of Congress. Nevertheless, it is important that Congress not stand idly by while a regulation is rushed through that is not based on sound science.

   I would like to thank the gentlewoman from Kentucky (Mrs. NORTHUP) for recognizing the importance of Congress' oversight role. The gentlewoman has genuine concern for the health and safety of workers. Despite loud and misguided opposition, she has had the fortitude to focus attention on the genuine and legitimate concerns with the ergonomics proposal.

   Mr. Chairman, I would urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment and to support a 1-year freeze. If we really want to help workers, then we need the results of an independent scientific study, let us get it right.

   Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentlewoman from Kentucky (Mrs. NORTHUP).

   Mrs. NORTHUP. Mr. Chairman, I just want to respond to the previous speaker and say we are all concerned about workers' safety. We all want workers to be able to prevent injury, but the Labor cabinet has not brought us anything that will help us do that, instead they bring us a one-sided rule. It does not include any collaborative effort, and it does not include any employee/employer partnership, which is what all of worker health is about.

   I would like to tell my colleagues that right here is a response to a request where the Labor cabinet paid 28 people $10,000 to organize and to present testimony in their behalf. The people that oppose the rule that talked about the obstacles and the difficulties in complying came on their own behalf, as citizens, as individuals, as the private sector, to say, hey, listen to us, we want what you want, please, work with us.

   The Labor cabinet paid 28 people $10,000 apiece to come and testify and enter into the record information to bolster their side. They had to pay people to support their position. So I think that what we see here is people who want to come to the table. They want to work with OSHA. They want best practice guidance.

   They want an idea of how they can look to best remedy their employee's problems, but what they do not want is a bang-you-over-the-head elephant-in-a-china-shop approach of a big government bureaucracy that will do nothing but cost them money and not give them any good guidance on how to achieve what they very much want to achieve.

   Ms. DELAURO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

   Mr. Chairman, I just wonder if my colleague from Kentucky (Mrs. NORTHUP) knows what the average salary is of the lawyers who sit at the table who represent the big business industries, that have in the past been opposed to trying to do something to protect the safety of working men and women in this country.

   The story of ergonomics is one of unending scientific study in the support of ergonomics and unyielding and baseless delaying tactics on the part of ergonomics opponents. We have had an 8-year ordeal of exhaustive scientific study that supports the science of ergonomics as, in fact, a way to protect workers and to save America's businesses money.

   For each year of delay, another 1.8 million U.S. workers experience a work-related musculoskeletal disorder. The Department of Labor estimates that the ergonomics rule would prevent about 300,000 injuries per year, save $9 billion in workers' compensation and related costs, about one-third of general industry work sites should be covered by the rule, protecting 27 million workers.

   Fewer than 30 percent of general industry employers currently have effective ergonomics programs, and it is probably because of the high-priced lawyers that they have hired to keep this rule from being promulgated. About a third of the industries, or over 600,000 incidents, are serious enough to require time off from work and cost businesses 50 to $20 billion in workers' compensation.

   According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 34 percent of all lost workday injuries are related to ergonomic injuries.

   When my colleague introduced this rider into the bill, it was said that this was a limitation and not a rider. I said at that time and I say, again, you can dress up a pig, you can put lipstick on it, you can call it Monique, but it is still a pig. This is a rider.

   This is a continued delaying tactic in this legislation. The National Academy of Sciences concluded in 1998 that ergonomic industries are directly related to work, that higher on-the-job physical stress leads to more ergonomic injuries, that most people face their greatest exposure to physical stress at work. Interventions that reduce physical stress on the job reduce the risk of injury.

   Since the process was begun during the Bush administration, over 1,000 witnesses have testified, more than 7,000 written comments have been submitted. OSHA has included 1,400 studies in the ergonomics rulemaking record. Science supports ergonomics. It protects worker health in this country. It will save American businesses billions of dollars.

   Why then do they want to continue to delay? Why do we want to do that? Let us support the amendment of the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. TRAFICANT). Let us move ahead with an ergonomics rule, so, in fact, what we can do is to do what we are sent here to do and not to do harm, but, in fact, to protect working men and women in this country.

   Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

   Mr. Chairman, we are here again talking about this topic that has been pointed out by many of my colleagues, has been discussed many times in this Congress. In fact, last year, we had a debate on the floor of the House, not 1996, not 1997, not 1998, but in 1999, to wait until the study by the National Academy of Sciences that had just been started was completed until OSHA moved forward with this regulation.

   The House passed that legislation and said that is what we would like to do. OSHA started that study, a year ago, about the time that this provision would be exhausted, that we get to the end of the fiscal year, that this provision would make it impossible for OSHA to implement these ergonomics regulations, that study will be completed, there will have then 90 days to look at it. And, in fact, if you ask most Americans, if it made sense to spend a million dollars on a study and then look at it before you move forward with regulations, they would say it did.

   The last National Academy of Sciences effort on this may have been exhaustive, but if I have read it right, it was over a long weekend. And the last recommendation in that exhaustive National Academy of Sciences study was this needs more study. When we had hearings last year on the bill where we talked about waiting for the National Academy of Sciences study, the past two presidents of the American College of Hand Surgery, many others who work in this area came in and said we are not ready yet to fully understand the causes or the treatments for these injuries.

   At the same time, it has been pointed out by others of my colleagues that the American workforce as fully employed as it has been in a long time is a valued workforce, that we have seen without this regulation ergonomics- related injuries declining every single year during this time that it has been said that the Congress is stretching out rushing to these standards.

   It is like OSHA's contention that every year that OSHA has been in existence that fatalities at the workplace have declined; that is true. It is also true that they were declining faster in the 20 years before OSHA went into existence. You can prove anything you want to with figures, but the one figure that is undeniable here is that workplace injuries are declining without these standards. These standards will benefit from scientific study, this amendment added to the bill by the gentlewoman from Kentucky (Mrs. NORTHUP) would give us the time we need for these studies to be completed,

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   If Federal bureaucrats are going to mess with the jobs of working Americans, they should do that with great extreme caution. They should do that based on sound science. This prohibition to implementing the ergonomic standards gives us a chance to look at that sound science.

   I urge my colleagues to defeat this striking amendment, to move forward with this prohibition and to do the right thing for American workers.

[Time: 19:15]

   Mr. NETHERCUTT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

   Mr. Chairman, what puzzles me a little bit about this objection to the provision that is in the appropriations bill before us today is that it ignores the work that States are doing on ergonomics.

   My State of Washington has worked for sometime with employers and others to develop ergonomic standards that are different than those that are part of the Federal standards or proposed to be the Federal standards.

   So what this does is put employers and employees in a dilemma in States like Washington State concerned that they want to comply with the State standard but also concerned that they will have to comply with the Federal standard that may be different.

   So I think we ought to be cautious in this whole effort to rush to judgment with respect to a Federal standard that will employ Federal employees to do Federal inspections that will put different burdens on people in States that are also facing the very real prospect of having State officials that the case of my State the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries also involved in inspections and oversight with respect to worker injuries.

   It is a given, I think, Mr. Chairman, that all of us want to make sure that our workers are protected and that they are not injured in the workplace. That is not in the best interest of employees; it is not in the best interest of employers. But to have this duplicate standard and the idea that the Federal standard is the only standard that is valuable is wrong.

   We do it, not only in OSHA, but we do it in other agencies as well where we have this sense that the Federal standard and the Federal Government is the only vehicle by which we can have fair and free and operating standards that affects citizens in our respective States.

   So I would just say my colleagues, Mr. Chairman, that I respect the proponents of this amendment; but I think that it is not the right amendment. I am going to vote against it and support the bill as it came out of the full committee with the idea that let us let States take leads on this as well, in particular, take leads that are not going to burden onerously the employers and the employees of our respective States and our respected businesses who are working so hard to make this engine of our economy move forward.

   Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

   (Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

   Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I rise in very strong support of this amendment. They have dragged out every phrase that is designed to scare the American people that the big Federal Government is rushing into promulgating this rule. Only to the Republicans would 10 years be a rush. Only to the Republicans would it be irresponsible to try to cover people who every day are getting crippled and losing job opportunities and losing compensation ability to support their families by a well thought-out rule.

   Only the Republicans would think that it is new science to have a report that reviews the existing science. There is no new science in this report. This is a review of literature as mandated by this Congress. But year after year, they have tried to delay this rule; and they have been successful in doing so.

   For those who say, well, we want our States to do it, what happens if one lives in a State that does not want to do it? I must say there is a lot of room for one's States to do whatever they want to do and a lot of room for one's employers to do whatever they want to do, because only 30 percent of the people working in general industry have any kind of effective program at all.

   Our committee in the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, they were suggesting they really did not see this. This was not a real injury. This was a fiction. I guess they do not go to the supermarket and they do not see the checkers who are wearing arm braces and wrist braces. They do not see the flight attendants who are wearing wrist braces. Maybe they do not go to Home Depot, an employer that has an ergonomics program and people are wearing back braces. They think that is dressing up. That is not a cumberbund; that is a back brace. Why? Because they are insurers and they work together, and they made a determination that they could reduce back injuries.

   Maybe the Republicans would recognize ergonomics injuries if we applied it to tennis and golf. Because certainly my colleagues have friends who are wearing arm braces on their left hand as they come through the ball and they have an ergonomics injury or from their forearm smash. Maybe then my colleagues would recognize that as ergonomics.

   But those people my colleagues see in the supermarket and the working place, on the construction site and the manufacturing areas, in the steel mills and the auto plants that are wearing those braces that is not for that reason. That is for the reason of repetitive motion.

   It is not to be laughed at. It is not to be made fun of. It is not to put people in the place of if they will have a responsible employer, they have protection; if they have an irresponsible employer, they will not have protection.

   The fact of the matter is that this rule is very well thought out. This rule is not one size fits all that is supposed to scare one away. It is not one size fits all. It is targeted where 60 percent of the injuries occur, of this kind of injury occur.

   It has been vetted. Thousands and thousands of people have commented on it. Seven thousand people I guess have had written comments. A thousand witnesses testified on this. OSHA went beyond the minimum requirements in terms of taking public testimony, and hearing witnesses went far beyond that. Yet, the gentlewoman from the other side would suggest to us that this is a rush, this is a hurry up. There is no such thing.

   This is a carefully thought-out rule designed to protect workers in the American workplace. It is a rule designed to save employers billions of dollars in worker compensation costs. It is designed to save employees millions of hours of lost time so they do not lose the wages that they use to support their families and provide for their families. That is what this rule is about.

   But every year, the Republicans have been able to stop it. Every year, the Republicans have been able to keep it from going into effect. Many of our colleagues refer to the fact that it was Elizabeth Dole, George Bush's Secretary of Labor, that brought this issue to the forefront and started this process. But that was 10 years ago. In that 10 years' time, hundreds of thousands of Americans have suffered this injury and suffered the loss of work, the loss of opportunity, and the loss of the ability to provide for their families.

   That is what is at stake here tonight. That is all that is at stake here tonight is whether or not people will go and they will go into a safer and safer workplace or whether they will be put at the whims of the chicken factories and irresponsible businesses that use people up and then throw them away, people so badly crippled in their hands they cannot take another job if they can no longer do that job. We have seen that. It is time to get rid of it. That is what this rule does, and we should support the Traficant amendment.

   Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

   Mr. Chairman, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Workforce Protection, I had firsthand knowledge of the

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   In case my colleagues do not know, business decisions are made on the basis of cost, as the gentlewoman from Kentucky (Mrs. NORTHUP) said. Injured employees cannot work. So it is up to the companies' interest, it is in their interest to protect their physical health.

   The law says one must have workman's compensation. It is expensive. It is not free. So employers work to protect their employees, they buy forklifts, they build conveyors, all without any government mandates.

   OSHA says that the ergonomic standard will only cost $4 billion. That is a wild guess. Business says it could cost $80 billion to $90 billion for a single industry. Industry has two choices: automate the jobs out of existence or move the business out of the country. We need some more accurate ideas as to what it will cost.

   In October of 1998, Congress appropriated almost $1 million for a nonpartisan study by the National Academy of Science, NAS, to focus on the relationship between repetitive task and repetitive stress injuries and the validity of ergonomics as a science.

   On August 3 of last year, the House passed the Workplace and Preservation Act to prohibit OSHA from issuing a prepared or final rule on workplace ergonomics until after the NAS study is completed in the year 2001.

   As we have seen, OSHA believes that it does not have to adhere to the will of Congress or the medical community in seeking to finalize the proposed rule by this fall. They have got a study going, but it is run by NIOSH, which is a division of OSHA. Nothing like examining oneself.

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