Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
The New
York Times
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November 18, 2000, Saturday, Late Edition -
Final
SECTION: Section C; Page 1; Column 2;
Business/Financial Desk
LENGTH: 1721 words
HEADLINE: Battle Lines Drawn Over Ergonomic Rules;
Business Pitted Against Washington
BYLINE: By
STEVEN GREENHOUSE
BODY:
Washington wants American
business to be ergonomically correct, but it will have a big fight on its hands.
After a decade in which many workers complained of suffering back
sprains, wrist pain and other injuries from repetitive workplace tasks, the
Clinton Administration issued one of the most far-reaching set of labor
regulations ever last week, saying the rules would prevent 460,000 injuries a
year.
The regulations will reach into millions of workplaces, forcing
many companies to hire consultants, provide ergonomics training and revamp
offices and assembly lines. To minimize the risk of injuries from lifting,
typing and other repetitive motions, companies will be called on to lower desk
heights, raise conveyer belts and reduce the loads that many workers have to
carry.
The new rules pit workers against business over safety issues as
nothing has since Congress created the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration in 1970. Labor unions have hailed the regulations as a
much-needed, long-delayed step, but business groups have denounced the rules and
have already gone to court in an effort to overturn them.
Alarmed that
the new rules will force companies to set up ergonomics bureaucracies and
redesign factories and offices, corporate groups estimate that complying with
the new regulations will cost American businesses $18 billion to $120 billion a
year.
The rules cover 102 million workers at six million work sites and
deal with the rapidly evolving field of ergonomics, the science of adapting jobs
to the physical abilities of workers. The rules seek to protect a wide range of
workers, including secretaries, seamstresses and slaughterhouse workers, from
injuries like tendonitis, slipped disks and carpal tunnel syndrome. They are not
aimed at protecting against slips and falls but against the wear and tear of
repetitive tasks.
"This is the largest regulation that OSHA has ever
issued and probably more costly than anything else that the Federal government
has done in the workplace," said Patrick J. Cleary, vice president for human
resources policy at the National Association of Manufacturers. "It's enormous."
With United Parcel Service officials estimating the new rules will cost
their company alone $20 billion, business groups argue that the costs will far
outweigh the benefits, raising prices for consumers and putting some companies
out of business.
But Charles Jeffress, OSHA's director, called corporate
America's cost estimates vastly inflated, suggesting those efforts were a
disingenuous part of one of the most intensive lobbying efforts by business in
years. Mr. Jeffress argued that the new rules, by preventing many injuries,
would actually save American corporations $9 billion a year by reducing workdays
lost, as well as medical bills and workers' compensation costs.
"I
clearly think the $120 billion figure is unreasonable," Mr. Jeffress said. "And
I think $20 billion for any single company is unreasonable."
He
concluded: "The biggest savings from the regulations will be in improved
productivity and reduced workers' compensation costs. If injuries occur, you pay
the worker, you pay the doctor, you pay the compensation costs, you lose
productivity from someone being out and you have to train someone new. That's a
significant cost."
With as many as 1.8 million injuries a year from
repetitive workplace motion, Mr. Jeffress said, any cost-benefit analysis should
not forget the pain and suffering experienced by injured workers. The Bureau of
Labor Statistics, using a narrower definition of such injuries, said that there
were about 600,000 of these injuries each year resulting in lost workdays.
Many business executives assert that the new rules represent improper
governmental -- many say Democratic -- meddling in the workplace when, the
executives insist, companies have already spent billions of dollars to make
production lines safer and workstations ergonomically sound.
Even before
these regulations were issued, they fueled an angry legislative fight in
Washington, where President Clinton blocked a year-end budget agreement after
Republicans insisted that it include an amendment to delay introduction of the
workplace rules until a new president took office.
The new rules face an
uncertain future, hinging in large part on the results of the Florida recount.
If Vice President Al Gore emerges as president, the new regulations are likely
to take effect, unless a Federal court overturns them. If Gov. George W. Bush of
Texas becomes president, he is not likely to block further Congressional efforts
to rescind the regulations or withhold money to enforce them.
The rules
are intended to protect workers like Helen Simpson-Kappell, who developed severe
wrist, elbow and neck problems from her job decorating cakes at a Kroger
supermarket in Bardstown, Ky., south of Louisville.
For eight hours a
day, month after month, she cut frozen cakes into smaller pieces, stirred icing
in a large bowl and squeezed icing tubes. But then her pain grew so intense that
she could no longer go bowling or cradle her baby granddaughter in her arms.
"You were always squeezing, mixing, twisting the wrist, and eventually
it hurt so bad I couldn't do activities that most people love, like working in
the yard," Ms. Simpson-Kappell said. Eventually she had surgery on both wrists,
forcing her to miss eight weeks of work.
Now Ms. Simpson-Kappell is
consigned to light duty, and the supermarket where she works has moved her to
its cosmetics department. She says that if she has to write or type for more
than a short period of time her wrist still hurts.
She said OSHA's new
ergonomics rules might have been able to prevent her injuries, requiring the
supermarket, for example, to make the cake table higher, use more mechanical
mixers and assign four people in two-hour shifts to do the repetitive icing
work, rather than relying on one person for eight consecutive hours.
"We
think the rules are the most significant action that OSHA has ever taken to
protect workers," said Peg Seminario, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s director of health and
safety. "Musculoskeletal disorders are the biggest source of workplace injuries
in this country."
But Donald Rainville, president of a machinery company
in northern Virginia, said that Federal officials had grossly underestimated how
much the new rules would cost companies like his. His company, Universal
Dynamics of Woodbridge, Va., produces machinery for the plastics industry, and
his employees often have to lift large pieces of steel, ranging in weight from
50 pounds to 200 pounds, to make those machines.
As a result of the new
regulations, he said, he will have to install overhead cranes to lift the steel,
requiring him to tear down one of his two factories, and build a new one with
35-foot high ceilings.
"That's going to cost me $10 million," he said,
"and I have a company with revenues of just $50 million a year."
He
added: "Big companies like DuPont have ergonomics engineers, and they're largely
complying. Smaller companies don't have experts on ergonomics, and we'll have to
hire someone to implement the regulations."
As often happens in disputes
between business and government, each side has spent a lot of ammunition seeking
to shoot holes in the other's arguments and numbers. Business groups mock the
agency's estimate that it will cost corporations no more than $4.5 billion a
year to carry out the new rules.
To underline how absurd they view that
estimate, business lobbyists point to a prediction by FedEx that it alone will
have to spend $6 billion to comply with the new rules. U.P.S. and FedEx
officials say they fear they might have to use two people in each truck, while
installing new sorting and lifting equipment in all their terminals.
Mr.
Jeffress disagrees, noting that many large corporations have spent far less than
that to reduce ergonomic hazards. "These rules require employers to reduce
injuries, and they have to do it to the extent feasible," he said. "This doesn't
say eliminate all musculoskeletal disorders. It doesn't say rebuild factories.
It gives some discretion."
Insisting that Washington has overreached,
business groups argue that the Federal courts should overturn the rules on the
grounds that they fail any cost-benefit analysis and are not based on scientific
evidence.
Baruch Fellner, a lawyer for the National Coalition on
Ergonomics, a business group, argued that many musculoskeletal injuries are
caused by multiple factors so it is hard to tell whether an elbow injury is
caused by tennis or typing.
One big objection from business is that the
rules make corporations responsible if an employee's activities on the job
contribute to a nagging back pain developed playing weekend softball.
"It's OSHA's first big step outside the workplace by defining injuries
from elsewhere that are aggravated by work," Mr. Cleary of the manufacturers
association said. "It's reaching into the softball fields and bowling alleys."
Safety officials say that employers would be responsible for such
preexisting injuries only if the injuries are seriously aggravated at work.
Under the new rules, many companies would need to do little more than
inform their employees about the new ergonomics standards. At companies where
one worker reports an injury, the employer could do what the safety and health
agency calls a "quick fix" without putting a major program into effect.
But if two employees in the same job category report injuries within an
18-month period, companies then have to carry out a broad program that calls for
screening for ergonomics hazards and then taking steps to reduce those problems.
Many corporate executives say the new rules are unnecessary because the
number of job-related musculoskeletal injuries has fallen in recent years. OSHA
officials say that has been a result of federal pressures and of companies'
taking steps to improve workplace safety.
"The fact that many businesses
are finding this a profitable investment reassures me it's the right thing to
do," Mr. Jeffress said. "Certainly there are folks who would rather see this
done voluntarily. The history of workplace safety in our country is that while
voluntary mechanisms work for some people, they don't work well for everybody."
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GRAPHIC:
Photos: Donald Rainville, president of Universal Dynamics in Woodbridge, Va.,
says ergonomic regulations would force him to spend millions on
a new factory. (Laura Kleinhenz/Saba, for The New York Times); Helen
Simpson-Kappell developed severe wrist, elbow and neck problems from her job
decorating cakes at a supermarket in Bardstown, Ky. She eventually had surgery
on both wrists. (David R. Lutman for The New York Times)
Chart:
"Pain on the Job"
The Labor Department, in proposing new rules to reduce
workplace injuries, has set off a debate over whether the cost of the rules will
exceed the benefit.
REPETITIVE-TASK INJURIES THAT LED TO LOST
WORKDAYS BY INDUSTRY IN 1998
Mining: 3,700 injuries
Agriculture,
forestry and fishing: 8,000
Finance, insurance and real estate: 12,000
Construction: 44,400
Wholesale trade: 52,400
Transportation and
public utilities: 69,400
Retail trade: 91,400
Services: 154,900
Manufacturing: 156,200
MOST INJURIES, BY JOB, IN 1998
Nursing aides, orderlies and attendants: 49,100
Truck drivers: 43,900
Laborers (nonconstruction): 36,600
Assemblers: 19,700
Janitors and
cleaners:14,000
(Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics)
LOAD-DATE: November 18, 2000 
