Congress complains loudly about ergonomics rule
Congress complains loudly about ergonomics rule
Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), who chairs the Senate subcommittee that oversees the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, says the ergonomics rule is not anywhere close to being ready and the rush to publish it is based on politics rather than what is in the best interest of the American worker.
"We have demonstrated that there are serious potential flaws in this rule," Enzi says. "States could suffer an assault on their workers’ compensation programs, health care facilities may have to close, and employees may suffer when this new onerous and complex rule overshadows other proven safety needs.
"The House and Senate, Democrats, and Republicans, voted for a reasonable, one-year delay in implementation of this rule. But OSHA is forging recklessly ahead with the rule. It has moved this issue from one of logic where the question is what can be done to improve worker safety, to a question of how to manipulate the process and use political gamesmanship to the agency’s full advantage."
Enzi notes than an amendment in the Labor Health and Human Services appropriations bill would not allow OSHA to go forward with the rule until Oct. 1, 2001. By publishing the rule now, Enzi says OSHA has taken a major step forward and is on its way toward implementing the rule before Congress can act.
"Our amendment is still valid though, and I encourage congressional negotiators to do what [they] can to strengthen our position against an administration that has continually ignored the will of Congress," he says. "We need an amendment that would preserve our intent even in the face of an opportunistic OSHA."
Enzi says Congress should take advantage of the 60 days from the time OSHA publishes the rule and the rule’s actual implementation.
"It’s hard to predict what will develop during those 60 days, but I will be doing what I can to lessen and eliminate the damage this rule presents," he says. "I hope the public will begin to see the dangers as people did when they learned OSHA was trying to claim jurisdiction in people’s homes that also double as offices."
A snake oil solution’
Enzi isn’t the only congressional leader fighting OSHA. Calling the ergonomics regulation "a monument to regulatory excess," Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond (R-MO) says the proposal will devastate the nation’s small-business community through endless confusion surrounding employer responsibilities and crushing costs associated with compliance and potential fines and penalties.
"It’s hard to believe, but OSHA has succeeded in taking a snake oil solution and distilling it into regulatory poison," says Bond, chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business. "By combining the worst features of last year’s regulation with some of the worst components from a draft the agency circulated in 1995, OSHA has come up with a rule that simply can’t perform in the workplace. Small businesses that will be forced to comply with this rule stand to be devastated."
The final regulation remains vague, confusing and difficult to understand, he says. In addition, OSHA has revived a requirement from a previous draft regulation it circulated in 1995 but never published, which requires that employers analyze specific tasks performed by individual employees to determine if so-called "action levels" of exposure are reached. A rule recently implemented by the state of Washington contains elements from that 1995 draft.
Whether any given employee is susceptible to injury at those action levels is unclear, but the new regulation will hold employers responsible for reducing exposures regardless, Bond says. Also retained in the final regulation
is OSHA’s expansive definition
of a "work-related" injury as one where an employee’s pre-existing musculoskeletal disorder is aggravated by workplace exposures.
"The practical impact means that an employer could be required to implement a full ergonomics program because of an employee’s activities outside the workplace or a medical condition unrelated to workplace exposures," Bond says.
Bond also took aim at OSHA for squandering resources to rush through a completed ergonomic rule while "continuing to ignore" a range of specific and constructive suggestions to improve the rule, which were submitted through the public comment and hearings processes.
"OSHA proceeded with breathtaking speed and near-complete disregard for the concerns voiced by small business at every turn," Bond says. "It was derelict in failing to go back and significantly improve this rule’s treatment of small business while it devoted so many resources and so much manpower to rush the ergo rule out the door. Essentially, all other business at OSHA has been put on hold."
Bond concludes that OSHA has succeeded in making the biggest, most complicated workplace rule ever crafted in Washington, more confusing, burdensome, and punitive.
"This process has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with OSHA keeping its union friends happy," he adds.
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