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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




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