Working families celebrated passage in November of the nation’s first federal ergonomics rule: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued the path-breaking standard as the result of a decade long campaign by union activists. The new rule will require employers to reduce ergonomics hazards in the workplace that injure and cripple more than 600,000 workers each year. Workers in virtually all sectors of the economy are at risk—from food-processing employees injured by the speed of work, to computer operators and cashiers injured by repetitive tasks and poor work station design, to nurses who suffer back injuries from lifting. While victory in winning the ergonomics rule is a monumental achievement, there hardly has been time to cheer—ergonomics activists already are battling to make sure that Big Business does not find a way to undo the new rule in the coming months. It’s likely business groups will ask their friends in the Bush administration to take immediate action to stay the rule.
By late November, AFSCME had alerted activists they would need to fight to preserve the ergonomics rule. "There is no question that bringing down the rule is a key priority for the business community," says Charles Loveless, AFSCME director of legislation. "Stopping business will require labor’s concentrated effort. We may not match its money, but we will prevail with people power."
"OSHA did years of research, in an open process, and if Congress does not make a similar effort to find the facts, they should keep their hands off the standard," says Frank Mirer, UAW Health and Safety Department director. "The same goes for the Bush administration."
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From America@work, January 2001. |
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Big Business is attacking the ergonomics rule—scheduled to take effect in workplaces late this year—in Congress and the courts. Suits filed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and other business groups have been consolidated in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In a release announcing his group’s suit, NAM Senior Vice President Mike Baroody charged that the "breathtaking speed with which OSHA has promulgated the ergo rule makes it clear: Rightly understood, this is not a health and safety rule, it’s a political payoff." With a decade hardly seeming like "breathtaking speed," the AFL-CIO and affiliate unions think the rule goes a long way toward addressing musculoskeletal injuries, but not far enough. The AFL-CIO and several affiliate unions are challenging the rule in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The union movement asks that OSHA strengthen the new rule—as now written, it does not cover all workers, nor provide remedies until an injury has occurred.
On the congressional front, Big Business is asking legislators to prohibit OSHA from spending money on implementing the new rule, or even to reverse it under the Congressional Review Act. In response, union leaders are contacting their members of Congress to urge them not to reverse the rule.
Activists plan to carry that message directly to members of Congress. The UAW began spreading the word in December by highlighting the issue at a skilled trades conference in Las Vegas. In early February, 1,000 UAW activists will be on Capitol Hill lobbying for the rule when they convene their annual political action conference in Washington, D.C.
Unions are contacting their members about the need to write their elected officials. "Local union people, the rank and file, have no idea how influential their contacts with Congress are," says Mirer. The most persuasive letters, he suggests, are from members who’ve suffered on-the-job ergonomic injuries, regained their health because the problems were fixed and now think all workers should be able to get such improvements as the OSHA rule provides. "They should explain from their own perspective how practical and straightforward the solutions are," he says.
As the need for volunteers continues in the campaign for the ergonomics rule, some unions are targeting activists especially close to the issue. At a Teamsters national grievance hearing this month in Coral Springs, Fla., IBT leaders will brief business agents and local officers about the new OSHA rule, reaching out especially to union members who work for United Parcel Service. UPS was not only "one of the biggest nay-sayers regarding this rule making process, but [their workers] have a terrific number of back injuries and other musculoskeletal disorders directly related to manual material handling," says LaMont Byrd, IBT director of safety and health. "This is an issue near and dear to the reps, because they hear from members about it daily."
Early last year, Wayne Fernsicola, secretary-treasurer of Hillside, N.J.-based IBT Local 177 and for 18 years a UPS package driver, testified at OSHA hearings about working conditions and injuries at UPS. He's ready for the next round in the ergo fight. "They can count on me," Fernsicola says, "because the situation has not abated and the injuries keep coming."
