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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.

   In conclusion, as currently written, the proposed ergonomics rule jeopardizes the jobs and welfare of both employers and employees. Pushing this inaccurate, unscientific proposal in such a short time period is both arrogant and reckless.

   I urge my colleagues to reject the Traficant amendment and support the prohibitive language in this bill to stop OSHA from moving forward on an ergonomic standard.

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

   Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment. I also want to oppose the overall bill. It is an anti-family bill overall. This amendment, if passed, would make it a little better but not good enough. This is an anti-working family's bill which takes away very vital parts that are necessary to keep working families afloat.

   The job-training section has been gutted. The school construction section, a mere $1.3 billion from school construction has been removed at a time when the public schools, only schools that working families can afford to attend, are being abandoned and in great need of repair.

   The National Education Association survey has recently shown that one needs $254 billion just to maintain the infrastructure of public schools across the country at the level to serve the present enrollment, let alone to prepare for future enrollments. Yet we have cut out $1.3 billion of a very modest proposal made by the President in this legislation. So if this amendment does pass, it will be slightly better; but we should still vote against the entire bill because it is against working families.

   This is against working families. It is against women in particular, because the philosophy here in opposing ergonomics is that, if an injury does not show blood, if there is no blood and there is no crushed bones, there is no pain. There is no injury. It is a Neanderthal approach to looking at the kinds of things that happen in the workplace.

   One does not have to go very far. One does not have to go to a town meeting to find people who are suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome. This place is full of them. We have lots of secretaries, lots of people who do the kind of work that results in carpal tunnel syndrome. Just look around. Do an honest survey. Republicans and Democrats should look around and do an honest survey.

   I have one person on my staff right now who has a problem with carpal tunnel syndrome. I had a person 12 years ago who worked on my staff and her hands gave out. She could not type. She had done a lot of typing before electric typewriters came on, before computers. She was ashamed to even complain and thought something was wrong with her. I did not know at that time what the problem was. I clearly identify it right now. It is a very real injury; 600,000 workers a year at minimum suffer from musculoskeletal disorders.

   There is a lot of talk about NAS doing another study. I want to emphasize the fact that it is a second study. They are calling for a second study by the National Academy of Sciences. They have done one already. They want it reversed. They want to hold out for it.

   The truth of it is the people who have called for this additional study are now showing their true colors in this particular legislation. The opponents had argued before that OSHA should wait for another National Academy of Sciences report before moving forward with the rule. They hope the National Academy of Sciences would change its earlier findings that support the ergonomics rule.

   Now they are not willing to wait for the NAS study. They are now saying that the rule should be stopped regardless of a conclusion of a new NAS study. There is kind of a blind ideological opposition to ergonomics. They have changed their tune either because they no longer hope NAS would change its findings or because they never really cared about a respected science in the first place. Backers of this rider are willing to ignore commitments and promises and sound science too.

   In 1997, NIOSH completed the most comprehensive review ever conducted of musculoskeletal disorders in the workplace. NIOSH reviewed over 600 epidemiologic studies and concluded there is strong evidence of an association between musculoskeletal disorders and work related disorders to high levels of repetition, forceful exertions, and awkward exposures.

   The study was peer reviewed by 27 experts from throughout the country. NAS, as I said before, came to the same conclusion after they conducted their own review.

   What we have here is a blind ideological refusal to accept the fact that, in this modern society, there are new kinds of disorders that can be very real and very painful and can rob a person of their ability to earn a living.

   I have seen many examples of women who have lost their ability to use their hands. They can no longer type, they can no longer make a living, the only way they knew how to make a living. It is very real. This anti-family bill is particularly harsh for women for that reason.

   Construction industries and many of the other standards that have been set by OSHA over the years relate to obvious kinds of injuries. When a person bleeds, when a bone is broken, nobody can quarrel about the fact that that is a real injury. But ergonomics produces very real injuries, also.

[Time: 19:30]

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

   Mr. Chairman, this issue of repetitive stress injury and repetitive motion injury is really a serious matter, and it is a very complex problem, and that is one of the reasons I think it has created as much debate as it has. It does have and can have a dramatic impact on the life of workers. But the problem is that it is extraordinarily difficult to separate these injuries that arise at the workplace from normal circumstances that just occur as a consequence of the wear and tear of the aging process. It is also complicated by the fact that workplaces are very complex places; and they are also very dynamic places, with circumstances and conditions changing all the time.

   The Labor Department's approach to this problem has been a complicated

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   What concerns many of us is that OSHA's approach to workplace safety has not worked. And it is generally not going to work, because if we take a one-size-fits-all set of safety rules and regulations and we try to apply it to these changing and complex workplaces, it does not produce the results that people expect. What these ergonomics rules do is they take what is a failed concept and they take it to its zenith. It will add dramatically to the cost of the operation of every small business in America, and it is going to fail to deliver on the promise of a safer workplace.

   There is a better way to do this, and the better way to do this is to focus on outcomes, setting goals, working with employer groups to reduce these kinds of injuries, providing employers with the flexibility that they need to be able to address their specific workplace with solutions to the problem.

   Now, how do we know that that is going to work? Because it is working. The safety rates in this country have increased dramatically in instances where employers and workers are given the flexibility to address workplace safety problems cooperatively. Injury rates of this kind are dropping. And that is because employers care about their employees. They are very concerned about their employees and they value them.

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