Copyright 2000 The Kansas City Star Co.
THE KANSAS
CITY STAR
June 17, 2000, Saturday METROPOLITAN EDITION
SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. C1 ;JERRY HEASTER
LENGTH: 597 words
HEADLINE:
House vote is a sensible approach
BYLINE: JERRY
HEASTER; The Kansas City Star
BODY:
Although not
much has been made of it by the media, the House
this week did American
business a huge favor by blocking
implementation of major worker-safety
regulations until late 2001.
It's not as if the move will be to the
detriment of the country's
work force, although organized labor certainly
will try to use the
vote against House Republicans in this fall's election.
One labor
lobbyist gleefully noted that the action "will be worth six pieces
of attack mail."
Perhaps, but it would take fairly far-fetched
distortions of the
truth to make the issue an effective negative campaign
weapon.
The rules involve the ergonomics of trying to protect workers
from repetitive-stress injuries, but critics contend the
resulting
massive compliance cost will far outweigh any potential benefit to
workers.
Earlier this year Missouri's Kit Bond, a leading Senate
opponent
of the regulatory initiative, called it "a devastatingly broad and
intrusive regulation." Bond, who heads the Small Business Committee,
said the rules lacked sufficient scientific justification and were so
flawed regulators should scrap the proposal.
To this end he
introduced a bill that would force the
Occupational Safety and
Health Administration to stay implementation
until a National
Academy of Sciences study of the regulation was
completed. The House bill
apparently goes a long way toward achieving
that goal.
While
OSHA has estimated the cost of compliance at
$4.2 billion a
year, the American Health Care Association
has estimated that the
cost for nursing-homes alone would range from
$5.6 billion to $6.5
billion.
OSHA, meanwhile, claims its regulations would prevent
300,000 work injuries a year, and thus save businesses more than
$9
billion annually.
Practical experience, however,
shows the numbers used in these
regulatory debates are virtually useless.
Over a generation of
regulatory activism, the federal government has been
notorious for
low-balling regulatory costs in an apparent effort to make
proposals
more acceptable. The best recent example is the cost of
reformulated
gasoline designed to reduce air pollution.
An analysis
by the Center for the Study of American Business at
Washington University in
St. Louis recently noted that major
corporations have been working on the
problem for years because it's
in their best financial interest to do so.
The result is a steady
decline for musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), from
750,000 in 1992 to
600,000 in 1997. Business groups, the study notes,
contend they
already are well along in efforts to fix what is fixable. A
major
problem, business says, is that many injury causes are not known and
some thought to be work-related aren't.
Another problem beyond mere
cost is the dense regulatory thicket
these initiatives create. The center's
study says the regulation
takes 50 pages to list the rules, 250 pages to
explain the rules, and
more than 1,000 pages to enumerate the 100-plus
injury categories
OSHA describes.
The House's
delaying action doesn't mean such regulations will
never come to pass.
Rather, it ensures government won't err in haste
with the result business is
forced to bear expensive but ineffective
regulation in perpetuity.
-
Jerry Heaster's column appears Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and
Sunday. To
reach him, write the business desk at 1729 Grand Blvd.,
Kansas City, MO
64108. To share a comment on StarTouch, call (816)
889-7827 and enter 2301.
Send e-mail to jheaster@kcstar.com
LOAD-DATE: June 18,
2000 
