Voluntary Ergonomics Standards Sought
Washington
In determining what, if any federal ergonomic safety regulations are warranted, the government should begin by supporting voluntary programs that encourage employers to make appropriate safety decisions, insurance industry and business community representatives say.
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration is in the midst of a series of three public hearings on ergonomic regulations. Ergonomic rules were promulgated in the last days of the Clinton Administration, but Congress nullified the initiative soon after President George W. Bush took office.
"Voluntary programs allow employers to choose actions that accommodate their individual assessments of how to best address the need to mitigate, the effectiveness of specific mitigations and the cost-effectiveness of mitigation," according to Keith Lessner, vice president for safety and the environment with the Downers Grove, Ill.-based Alliance of American Insurers.
In addition, Mr. Lessner said, voluntary programs are more efficient and achieve better results than unenforceable or poorly-enforced broad mandates.
Mr. Lessner said that OSHA should rely on "command and control" compliance programs only for recalcitrant employers who fail to address clear and significant hazards.
In joint testimony, the Washington-based American Insurance Association and the Independent Insurance Agents of America, based in Alexandria, Va., agreed that OSHA should not issue a mandatory standard at this time. It is almost impossible, they said, to demonstrate whether a musculoskeletal disorder is work-related in many cases.
In the previous rule, AIA and IIAA said, OSHA attempted to circumvent this difficulty by a standard that deemed almost any job duty as an ergonomic risk. This created an unreasonable presumption of workplace causation that would have led to soaring workers compensation costs, they said.
"OSHA cannot regulate workplaces for non-work-related injuries beyond its statutory mandate," AIA and IIAA said.
Pat Cleary, senior vice president with the Washington-based National Association of Manufacturers, agreed. "The simple facts are that the science of ergonomics is unclear and conflicting, the exact causes of repetitive stress disorders are difficult to determine, and there is no solid evidence of what works and what doesnt," he said.
But James August, director of occupational safety and health for the Washington-based American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said that an ergonomic rule is urgently needed and long overdue. Moreover, he blasted the Labor Department for holding forums that he termed "unnecessary" and a "hackneyed excuse to do nothing."
"These forums are part of a strategy to deny the facts, obfuscate the issues, and most importantly, to delay taking actions necessary to protect workers," he said. He added that the issues to be addressed by the forums are those raised by industry interests that are opposed to an ergonomics standard. "We are not fooled by these disingenuous proceedings," he said. "We are outraged."
In related news, the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board defeated efforts of organized labor to graft the Clinton Administration ergonomics regulations onto the state's ergonomics rules by a 4-0 vote. The American Federation of Labor and Congress of International Organizations had petitioned Cal-OSHA to amend California's ergonomics rules to incorporate the federal OSHA rules that Congress overruled earlier this year.
AIA had urged Cal-OSHA not to re-open the rule-making process, arguing that it did not make sense to create a "parallel process." U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, who oversees OSHA, makes recommendations on how to handle repetitive motion injuries in the workplace.
(Additional reporting for this article was provided by E.E. Mazier.)
Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, August 6, 2001. Copyright 2001 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.
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