Safety & Health Alert: Cooking the Books on Ergonomic Injuries

David LeGrande, CWA Safety and Health Director

One of President Bush's first actions as president was to throw out the hard-won Occupational Safety and Health Administration ergonomic standard developed by the Clinton administration.

Soon afterward, the new administration was even claiming that reports of workplace repetitive motion injuries — crippling carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis and other musculoskeletal problems — were on the decline.

How could that be? Quite simple: OSHA in 2001 got rid of the category for checking off these ergonomic problems on the employer forms used for reporting work-related injuries and illnesses. The only way such injuries now could be counted is when employers took it upon themselves to write in the nature of these injuries on the form.

Not surprising, OSHA's official record of repetitive motion injuries dropped from 6 percent of all workplace disorders in 2000 to just 1 percent from 2001 on.

While it is harder now to document the extent of ergonomic problems, CWA's OSH department has conducted investigations that prove that there are still high rates of repetitive motion injuries on the job, especially in high stress jobs where people work extensively on computers.

For example, CWA requested and analyzed data from injury and illness records involving 80,000 workers at three major telecom companies. It found that 30 percent of all medically diagnosed disorders were musculoskeletal injuries related to repetitive motion, and these represented 10 percent of the entire workforce sample. Most were jobs that involved heavy computer use.

A similar trend can be assumed among airline passenger service and reservation agents and newspaper workers — where previous CWA studies have found major repetitive motion problems — and other CWA occupations where computers are heavily used. Aside from computer jobs, ergonomic problems also plague technicians, nurses, manufacturing workers and others.

Compounding the challenge of tackling ergonomic problems, employers and insurance companies have lobbied states to eliminate repetitive motion entirely as a category for workers' comp. In Virginia and Missouri, for instance, compensatory coverage only applies to a musculoskeletal disorder when caused by a single traumatic event — completely ignoring cumulative trauma from repetitive motion in poorly designed job settings.

With no help from our current administration, CWA and other unions are left to tackle the epidemic of ergonomic injuries through collective bargaining and joint safety programs with our employers, member education, and political action at the state level. For instance, largely through CWA's efforts, California adopted a workplace ergonomic standard and District 9 has been working with AT&T to conduct joint training sessions throughout the state.

Meanwhile, action from OSHA on this issue will have to wait until we can elect a more worker-friendly White House and Congress.

For a fact sheet and other information on workplace ergonomic issues, members can click on www.cwasafetyandhealth.org.