| | Ergonomics Rules And The Disability Rights Lobby
by Jim Walsh
ne of the first signs that George W. Bush's administration would have a different focus than Bill Clinton's was the overturn of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's recently-enacted ergonomics standard. The ergo standard, designed to prevent a group of workplace disabilities (including repetitive stress injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome), had been winding its way through the corridors of Capital Hill for more than a decade. (Ironically, the standard had first been suggested when Elizabeth Dole was Labor Secretary for Bush's father.)
In recent years, especially, the ergo standard had become a political football. Alexis Herman, Clinton's Labor Secretary, confirmed her political ties to organized labor and certain disability rights advocates by championing the standard. Congressional Republicans, led by staunch OSHA critic Rep. Tom DeLay, argued that the standard was another example of bureaucrats burdening small business with back-breaking regulations. During his presidential campaign, George W. Bush had telegraphed his agreement with DeLay's plans to scuttle the new rule. This became a promise quickly kept by the new president.
What would OSHA's ergonomics standard have done? It would have required prevention programs aimed at informing employees about ergonomics injuries and giving them the tools for making claims. It would have required substantial reporting from employers whose workplaces had seen even a single case of a repetitive stress injury (RSI) or similar problem. Also, in language reminiscent of the Americans with Disabilities Act, it would have required employers to make accommodations for employees who claimed to be suffering from RSIs. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics says there are some 600,000 people who suffer from RSIs every year.
Why is any of this a particular burden for small business? Aside from lost hours spent talking about ergonomics issues, it created a new category of hard-to-prove work injuries. Most RSIs involve damage to nerves and other soft tissues. Such damage is extremely difficult to diagnose with certainty. Carpal tunnel syndrome is probably the best known RSI--and it is frustratingly hard to treat. Instead, physicians, therapists and other care-givers rely on lists of symptoms and conditions common to RSIs. These lists may be useful on a crude level of diagnosis…but they don't do much about establishing causal links between workplace conditions and injuries or other disabling results.
Opponents of OSHA's ergo standard argued this point constantly. As one policy wonk from the National Association of Manufacturers said: "There's no consensus in the scientific and medical communities over causes of ergonomic injuries." In many ways, the short-lived ergonomics standard had a lot more to do with workers' compensation and return-to-work issues than it did with anti-discrimination issues. This is one of the reasons that the issues never caught the attention of the general population.
So, why do disability rights advocates care about an administrative guideline aimed at preventing soft-tissue injuries of debatable severity? The answer is simple. Passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act has enshrined the disability rights lobby as a permanent member of the Beltway interest establishment.
Joining the ranks of Washington's rights-advocacy establishment usually means a subtle but perceptible shift in priorities. Dramatic reform painted in broad strokes gives way to the quid-pro-quo deal making of influence peddlers. This may be a kind of progress, from the institutional perspective…but, as pundits have been observing for hundreds of year, it makes for strange bedfellows.
Email Mr. Walsh at Jwalsh@silverlakepub.com to correspond with him. | |
