Congress and the White House turned their backs on the estimated 2 million workers who will fall victim to job-related musculoskeletal injuries this year by swiftly eliminating the Clinton administration's ergonomics standard.

The ergonomics standard was 10 years in the making by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and represented two decades of advocacy by organized labor. It was nullified by the Senate after 10 hours of debate and the House after only one hour of debate.

Both chambers used the 1996 Congressional Review Act for the first time to eliminate a regulation without public hearings.

The vote in both chambers was largely along party lines, with Democrats voting to uphold the rule and Republicans voting to kill it.

In the Senate, the vote was 56 to 44 to kill the standard. Six Democrats broke party ranks to vote against working families. The House vote was 223 to 206, with 16 Democrats voting to kill the rule and 13 Republicans voting to uphold it [see table].

AFL-CIO Pres. John J. Sweeney charged that a "Republican leadership juggernaut in the House resorted to arm-twisting and steamroller tactics to assure a majority to crush the ergonomics standard and deliver for their big business backers. In doing so, they wiped out a 10-year effort to establish protections for workers who suffer from crippling and disabling injuries. Surely this legislative efficiency could have been put to better purpose."

". . . [T]he voices of injured workers were not heard in the halls of Congress," Sweeney said. "They were drowned out by the predatory demands of corporate greed. Those demands have also dominated decision-making in the White House. . . . Not in recent memory have big business interests hostile to the concerns of working families held such sway with our president and the U.S. Congress."

The ergonomics standard would have required employers to identify and fix hazards that cause musculoskeletal disorders, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, tendinitis, and back injuries.

While OSHA touted the flexibility of the rule in providing employers leeway to fix the hazards, labor groups, such as steel, textile and trucking unions, asked the courts to review what they identified as weak spots, such as allowing an injury to occur before requiring an employer to develop an ergonomics program.

GCIU members affected

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, some 5,200 workers in the printing and publishing industry and 2,700 in the paper industry had repeated trauma injuries in 1999. The incidence rates for these injuries were quite high: 36.7 per 10,000 workers for printing and 38.8 per 10,000 workers for paper.

OSHA estimated that the ergonomics standard would have cost employers an estimated $4.5 billion a year but would produce a net savings of $9 billion a year in medical care, workers compensation, and other costs related to injuries.

Feeding time

Business groups, including the National Newspaper Association, Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, and small business, trucking, retail, and food and beverage associations, "papered Capitol Hill with estimates of how much it would cost to comply with the rule," The Washington Post reported.

The Post also reported that House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) met every day for a week with business lobbyists to plot strategy. The Post said those attending meetings were supplied with treats compliments of the American Bakers Association. According to the BLS, some 1.8 million workers producing baked goods suffered repeated trauma injuries in 1999.

The AFL-CIO reported that President Bush's position paper to Congress in which he urged support to crush the ergonomics rule was nearly identical to talking points issued by the Chamber of Commerce and the National Coalition on Ergonomics, an industry group.

Bush boasted about the elimination of the ergonomics standard – which he euphemistically called "regulation reform" – in a later speech before the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce. He said the action "shows a positive development and our willingness of people to get things done."

The AFL-CIO thanked the thousands of union families who wrote and phoned their members of Congress in support of the ergonomics rule. Workers also demonstrated against Vice Pres. Dick Cheney at a National Association of Manufacturers breakfast before the congressional votes. Workers with musculoskeletal injuries appeared on Capitol Hill to tell their stories of how they were injured on the job.

The federation praised the strong support during press conference appearances of Democratic senators Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Hillary Clinton (N.Y.), and Barbara Mikulski (Md.) and representatives Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), Richard Gephardt (Mo.), Nita M. Lowey (N.Y.), George Miller (Calif.), and Nancy Pelosi (Calif.).