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

[Page: H4101]  GPO's PDF

   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.

   Government cannot create a safe workplace, Mr. Chairman. Employers working with employees in a flexible setting addressing the specific problems in that business and that workplace do. I would oppose this amendment. Suspending this rule is a good idea. We need better science, we need better solutions.

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

   My colleagues, I would like to respond briefly to the gentleman from Montana. We deal with many complex issues in this body, and I would daresay if complexity is the excuse for nonaction, then we really would not be debating anything around here.

   And I would also like to respond to a second comment when the gentleman was talking about government cannot make our workplaces safer. Having served on this committee, and I am privileged to serve on the committee, government cannot make it better, most employees, most employers make the workplace better, but the government can encourage those employers, who may not make the workplace as safe as they can, to make it safer.

   I can remember very well the fire in the chicken factory when the employers locked the doors and 29 people died. So some employers, not most, may need an encouragement.

   I just want to comment on this particular amendment, because I do feel, my colleagues, enough is enough. The science exists, we have heard of it over and over again, the evidence has been gathered, the public comment has been heard and, frankly, our experience in our own offices confirm it. Each year more than 650,000 Americans suffer disorders caused by repetitive motion, heavy lifting or awkward postures that occur in the workplace. These disorders account for more than a third of all workplace injuries.

   We have to try our best to prevent these injuries using simple collaborative steps where we can work together. These are serious health problems and OSHA should be able to go forward within its authority to work with employers and employees to prevent and relieve them. Let us prevent and relieve these injuries and save billions of dollars in health care and productivity costs. Let us live up to our obligation doing what we can to protect American workers.

   Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

   Mrs. LOWEY. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

   Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me.

   I simply want to announce to the House that I am going to insert for the RECORD a letter from the American Federation of Labor, the AFL-CIO, in a letter dated June 8 to me. The letter says as follows:

   The Traficant amendment is being offered against the wishes of the AFL-CIO. It is being done in a way that does not provide an appropriate opportunity to work on behalf of its passage. Further, it appears to be an effort on the part of some to provide cover and encourage Members to support legislation that is blatant anti working family. We do not view this amendment as helpful to the effort to achieve final promulgation of an effective ergonomic standard. With or without this amendment, this legislation seriously harms the interests of American workers and we will continue to strongly oppose the passage of H.R. 4577.

   I simply note that so that Members understand that even if they vote for this amendment that is not going to fool anyone who represents American workers into thinking that that has made this bill acceptable to the interests of working families because it clearly is not and will not be so.

   Mr. Chairman, the letter I referred to above follows:

   AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR AND CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS,

    WASHINGTON, DC, JUNE 8, 2000.
Hon. DAVID OBEY,
House of Representatives, Washington, DC.

   DEAR CONGRESSMAN OBEY: The Traficant amendment is being offered against the wishes of the AFL-CIO. It is being done in a way that does not provide an appropriate opportunity to work in behalf of its passage. Further, it appears to be an effort on the part of some to provide cover and encourage members to support legislation that is blatantly anti working family.

   We do not view this amendment as helpful to the effort to achieve final promulgation of an effective ergonomic standard.

   With or without this amendment, this legislation seriously harms the interests of American workers and we will continue to strongly oppose the passage of H.R. 4577.

   Sincerely,

   Peggy Taylor,
Director, Department of Legislation.

   Mrs. LOWEY. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, I would just like to say, in conclusion, we as representatives of our community cannot solve all the problems, we cannot solve all the problems in the workplace, but we have a responsibility to do what we can, based on the science, to pass legislation that can make life a little better for workers who are working in many situations at a disadvantage to their health.

   Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

   Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Traficant amendment. First of all, let me put in the RECORD that I am very proud that Elizabeth Dole initiated this national debate and that our former colleague, Lynn Martin, when she was Secretary of Labor, moved it forward. And I daresay that if either of them were Secretary of Labor now we would not be here tonight.

   We are here because the proposed regulations issued by the Department of Labor are so unfair to workers. It is unfair to workers to have the Federal Government mandate a 90 percent compensation because an individual is injured as the result of ergonomics and a lower level of compensation if injured some other way. Do my colleagues realize what that is going to do in the long run to the sense of equity and fairness in labor law for working Americans?

   We are here tonight because this sets up a really unfair system of compensation, for the first time ever people getting compensated differently depending on the origin of their injury. It also will interfere with the very mechanisms that in my district have been put in place. And, believe me, I have been in factory after factory over the last year. And if my colleagues have not been there and looked at how their factories are improving their safety records, then they cannot really understand how these regulations will prevent the very mechanisms that are creating an absolutely astounding reduction in workplace injuries.

   Do my colleagues realize that occupational injury and illness rates are at their lowest level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began recording this information in the 1970s? And, in fact, since 1992, injuries resulting in the loss of workdays have dropped 20 percent. In my district I can tell my colleagues why that is happening. It is because people are very serious about keeping their employees healthy.

   In the factories in my district, teams of workers are out there looking at

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   I have seen that in plant after plant after plant, and I have had workers stand there and ask me how we can tell them they are doing it wrong when they are doing so well. I was in one of the plants in my district that was used by OSHA to do its research to develop these regulations. And what appalled them was that together they did identify some things that were problems, for which none of them could think up any solutions. But under these regulations one incident, not a pattern of problems, not a pattern of injuries, not a pattern of even symptoms, but one injury would trigger the whole 1200 pages of Federal regulations coming down on their head, even though OSHA themselves could find no solution to the problem that jointly the workers, management, and OSHA had identified.

   So this regulation that OSHA has come out with is so wildly inappropriately related to the problem of getting working people and helping working people and giving them the resources to identify the problems and find solutions, when employers are clearly highly motivated to invest in safety. It is so wrong headed it cannot be fixed and it must be stopped.

   Lastly, the idea of providing a separate, different, higher compensation for people because they are injured as a result of one cause versus another is simply going to create a system of such gross inequity that we should not here tonight let that go forward. I want a good ergonomics regulation. This Secretary has not produced it. And these regulations must be stopped.

   At the rate the Department works, it will take them a year to figure out and look at what would be the next step. But these regulations would be catastrophic for the constructive employers who are winning awards for safety, and that ought to tell my colleagues something.

   Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

   (Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

   Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I think that the question has gone begging this evening. Frankly, what we should be discussing is an overall policy point of view that this Nation wants to take with respect to its American workers.

   I have great difficulty with this legislation and will oppose it, but in particular this amendment clearly begs or asks the question, what do we do about 1.8 million U.S. workers that experience a work-related musculoskeletal disorder, such as injuries from over-exertion or repetitive motion? How do we ignore that?

   The real question is not how we see it fitting in our respective districts but how we see it fitting across the Nation as it responds or relates to the idea that we must find some basis of dealing with this national issue, and that is that workers across the Nation are, in fact, experiencing these kinds of injuries. Do we also realize that over 600,000 incidences occur that are serious enough to require time off from work and cost businesses between $15 billion and $20 billion?

   I would beg to differ as to whether or not our Secretary of Labor and the Department of Labor have not done what they are supposed to do. Ergonomics regulations may affect some businesses to the extent that they do not want them to affect them, but our responsibility here on the floor of the House is to deal with individual workers who cannot address these issues themselves. It is a responsibility to make national policy that answers the question with respect to a safe workplace.

   The Department of Labor estimates that the ergonomics rule would prevent about 300,000 injuries a year. I would simply say that that is an important preventive measure. That is an important policy decision that responds to the needs of at least 300,000 workers. Why would we not want to do that? Why would an amendment even be accepted to eliminate that aspect of the Department of Labor's responsibility?

   I am dealing in another committee with a complaint that an agency has not written rules to address a particular legislative initiative.

[Time: 19:45]

   Now, we have an agency that has and we have the claim that their regulations are unfair to workers and unfair, of course, to businesses. I am simply speechless. Because if they are unfair, why are we continuing to have these injuries? We obviously need to solve the problem in some way, shape, or form or fashion.

   I would argue that the ergonomics would prevent about 300,000 injuries per year and save $9 billion.

   Mr. Chairman, I think it is important to note that about one-third of general-industry work sites will be covered by the rule, protecting 27 million workers. Fewer than 30 percent of general industry employers currently have effective ergonomics programs.

   This is a policy question that I hope this House does not find itself on the wrong side of the street. I would like us to err on the side of protecting 27 million workers and preventing the injuries of 300,000 of those who are injured.

   Ergonomics are real. The injuries are real. The need is real. I would ask that we would support this amendment, at least to make the statement and to protect the workers as they work on a daily basis.

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

   Mr. Chairman, section 103 of the bill says ``none of the funds made available in this Act may be used by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to promulgate, issue, implement, administer or enforce any proposed temporary or final standard on ergonomic protection.''

   Earlier in this debate, I rose and went to that well to speak to what was wrong with that section, and I joined my good friend, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. OBEY), in stating that I am opposed to this bill; but I am going to support this amendment. And the reason I am going to support this amendment is because in my district in Cleveland, when I go out and meet the people, as I do all the time and as many of us do in our own districts, I always study people. And when I go out to shake hands and hands reach out, I want to tell my colleagues how many times I would see over and over a scar on somebody's wrist, mostly women I might add.

   And my colleagues know what it is more often than not. Someone has had surgery to correct a carpal tunnel condition. So we see a hand reach out; and if there is a scar on that wrist, more often than not, that person has had a repetitive motion injury, carpal tunnel.

   Now, if we shake that hand of that person who had that injury and had surgery to correct the condition, we might consider the moral statement of joining hands with someone who has had that injury and then at the same time be willing to sweep aside any attempt to stop others from being able to be protected in the workplace.

   Now, I know about one such person because it happened to be my Aunt Betty. She helped to raise most of the children in our extended family. And Aunt Betty did it by working her 40 hours a week in a large corporation in downtown Cleveland as an executive secretary and spent 30 years on the job typing away and then finally took retirement because her hand would not work anymore. That is why she quit. She would still be doing it, just that her hand would not work anymore.

   So she had surgery. And now she is in her seventies and enjoying life retired. She would have kept working as long as she could, but her hands would not work anymore.

   Well, I can tell my colleagues there are a lot of Aunt Bettys out there. And when I go and reach out in the crowd, I can see the little marks on their wrists. We need ergonomic standards. We need to have the Occupational Safety and Health Administration be able to promulgate and issue and implement and administer and enforce temporary or final standards on ergonomic protection. That is why I am going to be supporting this amendment.

   Arguments to the contrary attempt to reduce all workers to the status of

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   This is an issue about human beings and our dedication to them.

   Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. TRAFICANT).

   Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Chairman, Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole announced a major initiative to reduce repetitive motion trauma. She said she intended to begin the rule-making process immediately. She said Assistant Secretary of Labor Scanell shall begin an inspection program in early 1991.

   My colleagues, this is 2000. I think 9 years is enough.

   Mr. PORTER. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that 10 minutes of additional debate be allowed on this amendment with 5 minutes allocated to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. OBEY) and 5 minutes allocated to myself.

   The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Illinois?

   Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, I would like some time in the closing of this debate.

   Mr. PORTER. Mr. Chairman, I ask the gentleman, how about 2 1/2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. TRAFICANT), 2 1/2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. OBEY), 2 1/2 minutes to me, and 2 1/2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Kentucky (Mrs. NORTHUP)?

   Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Chairman, I shall accept that.

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