Chronic Pain a Way of Life for Career Technician

Steve Carney, a Bell Atlantic field technician, gave the following account of pain and injuries on the job when he testified March 27 in Washington, D.C. in favor of a proposed federal rule to protect workers from poor ergonomics. Carney is a chief steward in CWA Local 1103 in Port Chester, N.Y.

For 31 years, I’ve worked in the field repairing telephone cables. I’ve worked in every conceivable weather condition from blizzards and hurricanes to heat waves and below-zero temperatures. I’ve worked in manholes, on telephone poles, off ladders and in hydraulic aerial lifts to restore service to our customers. What does this have to do with the proposed ergonomic standard? Well, in short, everything.
I will celebrate my 50th birthday this year. Yet on certain days I feel like I’m going to celebrate my 75th because of the aches and pains that I’ve learned to grin and bear. The work I’ve performed over the years has taken a toll. My fellow craftsmen and I have contorted our bodies and demanded more from them than they were designed to bear. Now, we all have similar afflictions. I don’t believe this is just coincidence or the result of getting older. Most of us have aches and pains in the same areas: knees, backs, shoulders, wrists. We were never taught how to do the job differently to avoid pain, or given tools that could have helped us.
I believe every worker should be given the basics of ergonomics. We should be told that the risk of injury over an extended period of time increases when we demand more of ourselves than our bodies were designed to perform. It’s important that workers know how to identify WMSDs (work-related musculosketal disorders) and that they seek medical evaluation before the symptom becomes an injury that needs therapy or surgery to correct. No one ever told us that the aches and pains we are experiencing are, in fact, warning signs for catastrophes if we don’t act on them.
I was having problems with my left knee for months. Then, after a day of getting in and out of my company vehicle, I could hardly move my leg. I asked for a step to be installed just under the driver’s door. It’s now easier for me to enter and exit my vehicle and puts less strain on my knee. During my entire working career I have ascended and descended from cabs of vehicles as well as beds of trucks and buckets of aerial lifts, none of which were designed to consider how much weight our knees bear each time we perform this seemingly simple task. Yet, each time, we are slowly but surely setting an injury in motion.
About a year ago, I attended a “Train the Trainer” course on outside plant ergonomics, developed jointly by CWA and Bell Atlantic. Because of that training I’m more conscious of how I physically associate myself to my work. Because of that awareness, I took the necessary steps to ask for the step on my vehicle.
Sadly, this was the first time I heard about WMSDs in my 31 years of service. But finally our employer realized there was a need to educate workers. Bell Atlantic assisted with funding and cooperated in the compilation of data. They allowed experts to observe our craftsmen at work. Because of this willingness, we now have a basic educational program that is helping technicians perform their work more safely.
This is certainly a step in the right direction. But without a federal standard, most employers will not institute any educational or engineering controls that could prevent WMSDs. Please help stop the pain that many of us have learned to accept because we don’t know any better.