Copyright 2000 The Washington Post
The Washington
Post
November 1, 2000, Wednesday, Final Edition
SECTION: FINANCIAL; Pg. E01
LENGTH: 1189 words
HEADLINE:
Repetitive-Stress Rule at Core of Dispute; Failed Budget Deal Highlights
Differences Between Parties on Government's Role in Business
BYLINE: James V. Grimaldi; Frank Swoboda , Washington
Post Staff Writers
BODY:
The collapse of
the budget deal between Congress and the White House on Monday brought to the
fore a relatively obscure but gargantuan, decades-old political struggle between
American business and organized labor over proposed federal rules aimed at
preventing debilitating aches and injuries from repeated workplace tasks.
The fallout from President Clinton's midnight spending-bill veto, coming
in the heat of election-year politicking, exposes sharp philosophical
differences between many Democrats and Republicans over the role of government
in the marketplace.
Underlying the budget-deal meltdown also is a
classic political struggle of two powerful constituencies aligned with the two
major parties: The Clinton administration and its labor allies argue that the
proposed rule would protect millions of American workers from needless injury
and suffering; some congressional Republicans and their business supporters
counter that the rule is ill-founded, unnecessary and too costly.
The
issue is one example of the stakes in Tuesday's elections: The question of when
and how the rules are implemented could be settled when voters choose the next
president and decide the balance of power in Congress.
"The question is
whether the best role is to have the government essentially set the rules of the
game in some circumstances versus putting a much heavier reliance on
corporations to police themselves in an increasingly competitive economy, both
because of globalization more broadly and deregulation domestically," said
Harley Shaiken, a labor-relations specialist at the University of California at
Berkeley.
"It is one of the real issues that divides the Democrats and
the Republicans and is a pivotal issue to working Americans," he said.
The regulation at the heart of this dispute, proposed last November by
the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, would require employers to
provide work spaces and equipment to support the physical makeup of each worker,
a proposal that could cover about 27 million people who work at computers, on
assembly lines, at grocery checkouts or at other jobs that require repetitive
motions or heavy lifting. It would require many business to have a program to
identify such ergonomics issues, and to adjust the working conditions or
assignment of an employee who reports an ergonomic injury.
Business
groups estimate that the rules could cost U.S. industry anywhere from $ 18
billion to $ 91 billion a year. OSHA has estimated the annual
cost of implementing the rule to be closer to $ 4.2 billion and says the rules
also will help save employers the money they lose because of injured workers.
"They say this is going to cost business a lot of money," President
Clinton told several thousand people gathered at a Louisville high school
yesterday, "but the truth is that 600,000 people lose time from work because of
repetitive-stress injuries on the job. It costs business $ 50
billion a year."
OSHA estimates that 1.8 million
American workers annually have injuries related to overexertion or repetitive
motion in their jobs, from actions as different as slicing meat and using a
computer keyboard.
But some critics in business and on Capitol Hill have
argued that no rule should be issued until there is more scientific evidence
that ergonomic problems at work cause these injuries. They say, for example, it
may be hard to know whether that sore wrist is due to the time on the keyboard
at work, or time on the computer at home or in another job, or time spent on the
tennis court--and therefore it's not fair to require businesses to bear the
costs of such injuries.
The new ergonomic standards are meant to address
what the U.S. Labor Department calls a workplace epidemic that has emerged over
the past 15 years, ever since OSHA first became openly
concerned about musculoskeletal injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome,
tendinitis and back strain.
Labor Secretary Alexis M. Herman says these
musculoskeletal disorders "are the most prevalent, most expensive and most
preventable workplace injuries in the country."
Clinton has promised
organized labor he would veto any legislation that would block further efforts
by the Labor Department to issue the new ergonomics rules--and he made good on
that promise late Monday.
The issue is now caught between the White
House pledge to labor and the pledges of the Republican congressional leadership
to the business community to block the ergonomics proposal. A spokeswoman for
House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) said the dispute boils down to a
misunderstanding over language meant to implement a Monday night deal and that a
settlement is in the works, but a White House spokeswoman said that no talks are
under way.
Fierce lobbying by corporate groups with considerable sway
among the GOP leadership helped kill a deal sealed with Republican negotiators
early Monday. Led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association
of Manufacturers, the industries include groups representing trucking companies,
bakeries, soft-drink makers and parcel-delivery companies.
Under the
doomed compromise, the administration would have issued the rules, but the new
president would have had until June to halt enforcement by
OSHA. But by the time the bill got to Clinton, it contained a
business-backed provision that delayed issuing the rules until next year.
"The only reason they are rushing it through," said Chamber of Commerce
Vice President Randy Johnson, "is because of the fear that Gore might lose the
election."
Business leaders also have bankrolled political ads over the
workplace rules. In recent weeks, the National Association of Manufacturers has
been running radio ads in key congressional districts warning that the rules
would cost jobs.
Litigation is also at the heart of the dispute. Both
business and labor are likely to take the matter to court, as they have with
many rules proposed by OSHA during its 28-year history. "I
figure, on ergonomics, we end up in court at the end of the day," said Bruce
Josten, the chamber's executive vice president for government affairs.
Eighty percent of all current OSHA health and safety
standards are the same voluntary standards U.S. businesses were using in the
late 1960s, reflecting a long history of business and political opposition to
new OSHA standards.
But Heidi Eberhardt believes any
new rule is two years too late for her. She said she has a disability caused by
typing at a Boston area Internet firm, and now works for the Coalition on New
Office Technology, a nonprofit group in Boston that supports the new rules.
Eberhardt, 32, said she believes the proposed regulations will save
thousands of workers from disability and could have helped her, too.
"I
don't know if I ever will be able to type again," she said. "I'll always have to
be careful with my hands. If I had any kind of ergonomic knowledge back then, I
wouldn't be injured today."
Staff writers Cindy Skrzycki, Carrie
Johnson, Eric Pianin and Ellen Nakashima and researcher Richard Drezen
contributed to this report.
LOAD-DATE: November 01,
2000