 GOP- led
Congress Kills Ergonomics Standard
UAW President Stephen P. Yokich blasted President Bush and the members
of Congress who voted to repeal the new OSHA ergonomics standard for “selling
out the health and safety of America’s working men and women.”
“In less than 36 hours, the Republican-controlled Congress--with
the full backing of President Bush and help from 22 Democrats--wiped out
ergonomics rules that were the result of ten years of exhaustive scientific
research, discussion, review, public hearings, and study after study,”
Yokich said.
“This president and this Congress now hold the dubious distinction
of overturning a worker health and safety rule for the first time in OSHA’s
30-year history,” said Yokich.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney angrily said, “Not in recent memory
have big business interests hostile to the concerns of working families
held such sway with our president and the U.S. Congress.”
The UAW played a key role in developing the ergonomics standard, which
would have dramatically reduced the incidence of repetitive-stress injuries,
sparing over a half a million workers a year the pain of back strains,
carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis, ruptured discs, and other musculoskeletal
disorders.
Last year several UAW health and safety experts from workplaces around
the country testified before OSHA hearings in Washington D.C. and Chicago.
Susan Ruhala, a UAW joint ergonomics technician at UAW Local 651, told
OSHA that 46 percent of the total recordable injuries in the Delphi plant
in Flint, Mich., were due to repetitive work, awkward postures, and forceful
exertions.
President George Bush worked hard to repeal the standard, and corporate
and small business lobbyists were out in force. To kill the ergonomics
standard, Congressional Republicans used an unusual legislative weapon,
the Congressional Review Act of 1996 which allows Congress to repeal regulatory
rules. Filibusters and amendments are not allowed, and debate is sharply
limited.
All 50 Republican senators and six Democrats (mostly from the South)
passed the ergonomics disapproval resolution over the objections of 44
Democrats.
A few days later the House passed the ergonomics disapproval rating by
a largely party line vote of 223-206. Thirteen Republicans (mostly from
New York and New Jersey) joined 192 Democrats and one independent in voting
against the resolution. Sixteen Democrats (mostly from the South) sided
with 206 Republicans and one independent in voting for it.
George W. Bush’s active opposition to the standard was ironic: In
1990 his father’s Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole had initiated
the scientific studies that led to the regulation.
Then Dole had called repetitive strain injuries “one of the nation’s
most debilitating across-the-board worker health and safety illnesses.”
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