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Senate Committees Move Forward on Ergonomics Legislation
Workers’ advocates in the U.S. Senate are making progress toward an ergonomic standard, with one committee approving a bill requiring the U.S. Department of Labor to issue a rule within two years and another earmarking $2 million to help the Occupational Safety and Health Administra-tion write the rule.
The funds were budgeted by the Senate Appropriations Committee to ensure that funds are available if the Breaux-Specter bill (S.2184) or similar legislation requiring a standard goes forward.
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions passed the Breaux-Specter bill 11-10, with all Democrats and Jim Jeffords, (I-Vt.) in favor and all Republicans against. In addition to sponsors John Breaux (D-La.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the bill now has 35 co-sponsors, with Specter the only Republican. It’s not clear how long it will take for the Senate bill to make it to the floor. No similar bill has been introduced in the House.
“This is an important step toward gaining critically needed protections for workers,” CWA President Morton Bahr said. “But this is still an uphill battle. Union families must make it crystal clear to lawmakers that their position on worker safety is a critical factor in deciding which candidates to support in November and in future elections.”
Every year, 1.8 million workers suffer ergonomic injuries related to repetitive strain, poorly designed work areas, heavy lifting and other problems. About a third of the workers require time off to heal, and many are permanently disabled.
An OSHA standard to reduce ergonomic injuries, developed in bipartisan fashion over a decade and backed by years of medical research, became effective at the end of the Clinton administration. However, President George W. Bush killed the rule almost as soon as he took office.
In the HELP committee session on the proposed bill, members opposed to the ergonomics standard spent most of their time continuing to condemn the rule issued by President Bill Clinton.
They insisted the Breaux Bill was a ploy to reinstate the standard, ignoring the fact that new rules would be written by the Bush administration. Chairman Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) reduced their arguments to the bottom line: they simply don’t want a standard, any standard, he said.
Labor Secretary Elaine Chao is already trying to weaken the bill, or make it disappear altogether, sending a letter to the committee saying she would recommend that Bush veto the bill in its present form. Chao pledged last year to work with labor to develop a standard after Bush abandoned the original rule.
In a further display of the department’s attitude toward ergonomics, the agency announced recently that it will add yet another one-year delay to its decision on whether employers should have to specifically record ergonomic injuries on federal reporting forms.
Such record-keeping is key to learning how, why and how often workers are hurt, information that is critical to developing safety plans, said CWA Executive Vice President Larry Cohen, whose office oversees workplace health and safety issues.
“All we’ve seen from this administration is a pattern of delaying and denying critically needed help for workers, while corporate America gets handout after handout, break after break,” Cohen said. “Labor has to mobilize like never before to fight this and the countless other anti-worker initiatives coming out of the White House and Republican leadership in Congress. Lives are at stake.”
The funds were budgeted by the Senate Appropriations Committee to ensure that funds are available if the Breaux-Specter bill (S.2184) or similar legislation requiring a standard goes forward.
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions passed the Breaux-Specter bill 11-10, with all Democrats and Jim Jeffords, (I-Vt.) in favor and all Republicans against. In addition to sponsors John Breaux (D-La.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the bill now has 35 co-sponsors, with Specter the only Republican. It’s not clear how long it will take for the Senate bill to make it to the floor. No similar bill has been introduced in the House.
“This is an important step toward gaining critically needed protections for workers,” CWA President Morton Bahr said. “But this is still an uphill battle. Union families must make it crystal clear to lawmakers that their position on worker safety is a critical factor in deciding which candidates to support in November and in future elections.”
Every year, 1.8 million workers suffer ergonomic injuries related to repetitive strain, poorly designed work areas, heavy lifting and other problems. About a third of the workers require time off to heal, and many are permanently disabled.
An OSHA standard to reduce ergonomic injuries, developed in bipartisan fashion over a decade and backed by years of medical research, became effective at the end of the Clinton administration. However, President George W. Bush killed the rule almost as soon as he took office.
In the HELP committee session on the proposed bill, members opposed to the ergonomics standard spent most of their time continuing to condemn the rule issued by President Bill Clinton.
They insisted the Breaux Bill was a ploy to reinstate the standard, ignoring the fact that new rules would be written by the Bush administration. Chairman Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) reduced their arguments to the bottom line: they simply don’t want a standard, any standard, he said.
Labor Secretary Elaine Chao is already trying to weaken the bill, or make it disappear altogether, sending a letter to the committee saying she would recommend that Bush veto the bill in its present form. Chao pledged last year to work with labor to develop a standard after Bush abandoned the original rule.
In a further display of the department’s attitude toward ergonomics, the agency announced recently that it will add yet another one-year delay to its decision on whether employers should have to specifically record ergonomic injuries on federal reporting forms.
Such record-keeping is key to learning how, why and how often workers are hurt, information that is critical to developing safety plans, said CWA Executive Vice President Larry Cohen, whose office oversees workplace health and safety issues.
“All we’ve seen from this administration is a pattern of delaying and denying critically needed help for workers, while corporate America gets handout after handout, break after break,” Cohen said. “Labor has to mobilize like never before to fight this and the countless other anti-worker initiatives coming out of the White House and Republican leadership in Congress. Lives are at stake.”