Danger at Work : Often, Pain Comes With the Paycheck at Today’s Modern Workplace : Health: Dizzying technological advances may have ignored the human factor. On-the-job injuries are increasing.

In 18 1/2 years in a meatpacking plant, Dave Kellen’s wages have helped build his house, put food on the table and rear two daughters. But, he says, he has paid a terrible price: use of his hands.

Kellen’s hands are too weak to chop wood, much less twist open a bottle. He blames it on years of such jobs as tearing gobs of fat from hogs, repeating the same few steps, struggling to keep pace with hundreds of carcasses an hour.

His employer, John Morrell & Co., says plant safety is improving and is contesting a $4.3-million government fine for allegedly allowing dangerous work conditions. Meanwhile, Kellen, 41, who has endured surgery twice on each hand, now sweeps floors at the Sioux Falls, S.D., plant. And he’s worried.

“I’m sitting here with my hands 37% crippled. They’re what’s got to make my living for the next 20 years,” he said. “Is Morrell going to be there? Are my hands going to get worse? I don’t know who’d be willing to hire me. That’s what’s got me scared. It’s like going blind slowly.”

Insidious Trend

Such problems go beyond one man, one company or one occupation.

Many union, safety and academic experts say Kellen is an example of an insidious trend in American industry: Companies are producing more, cutting payrolls, modernizing, computerizing--and creating a more hazardous workplace.

“People are getting hurt more than they ever were,” said Joseph Kinney, director of the National Safe Workplace Institute. “They’re under more pressure to produce than they ever were. A lot of companies that once were using seven workers to do a job are now asking five to do it.

“The new fat-free American business syndrome is asking those who are left to do too damn much.”

Similar concerns have surfaced at congressional hearings, union organizing drives and in newsrooms, grocery stores, auto plants, construction companies, steel mills and other industries. Experts say automation, competition and the changing business landscape play a role.

“We live in a time of corporate downsizing, mergers and acquisitions and leveraged buyouts that end or greatly diminish many of the modest safety and health programs that exist,” said a September report by the workplace institute. “The raiders and downsizers are unwitting participants in our industrial carnage.”

Although most workers no longer confront sweatshop horrors and archaic equipment, some experts say that a new trend, in which technology allows experienced employees to be replaced by those with less training, has contributed to increasing dangers.

Others disagree, noting large investments that companies, including the Big Three auto makers, are making to improve plant designs. They also cite giant government penalties against lead, paper, meatpacking, construction and other firms that are serving as a deterrent.

“I think workplaces are generally safer,” said Berrien Zettler, deputy director of compliance programs at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Kinney’s group says OSHA has improved, but he cites government numbers: The average number of workdays lost due to on-the-job accidents for each 100 workers rose from 58.5 days in 1983 to 69.9 days in 1987.

And the National Safety Council says permanent work-related disabilities rose from 60,000 in 1986 to 70,000 in 1987.

Safety experts speculate that conditions may be even grimmer because companies under-report injuries to avoid OSHA inspections. In fact, the government has cited Union Carbide Corp., USX Corp. and others for alleged record-keeping violations.

Linked to Prosperity

Ironically, some trace rising injuries to economic prosperity, especially in steel. One steelworkers’ local says its injury rate nearly doubled when overtime peaked.

“When you’re tired and you work in a dangerous operation, fatigue is going to lead to accidents,” said Mike Wright, the United Steelworkers of America’s health and safety director.

A 1988 University of Texas study found that nearly 93% of injury increases in durable goods industries could be explained by overtime and employee turnover.

Those aren’t the only culprits.

“Automation is increasing and the workers who performed a variety of the jobs are being replaced by machinery,” said Bob Hall, research director at the Institute for Southern Studies in North Carolina.

“The jobs that are left are not as complicated . . . (and) increasingly treat people as robots . . . (and treat) arms and hands like they’re part of a machine. But you can’t oil a person’s arm or hand.”

Repetitive Trauma

Workers who cut, chop or pull thousands of times daily have developed painful and sometimes disabling hand, arm and wrist ailments, known as repetitive trauma disorders. The most severe form is called carpal tunnel syndrome, a thickening or swelling of tendons in the wrist.

Reporters and editors have contracted carpal tunnel syndrome and other disorders linked to their computer terminals. Grocery checkers, too, often have the disease, triggered by sliding items across the counter while operating a cash register.

Repetitive trauma disorder cases--including hearing loss--soared from 26,700 in 1983 to 72,940 in 1987, the government says, though some attribute part of that to heightened awareness.

Much publicity has focused on meatpacking where, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union says, production jumped nearly 20% in the last five years while numbers of production employees dropped by almost 10,000.

“When line speeds are increased and the work force is decreased in the name of efficiency, injuries go up,” said Debbie Berkowitz, the union’s health and safety director.

Meat and poultry workers, some of whom have testified before Congress, have complained about treacherously fast production lines, where meat flies off damaged conveyor belts and blood splatters in their faces. They have described cysts, infections and crippling hand and back pains that make it hard to lift their children, comb their hair or hold a glass.

Former poultry employee Lillie Watson worked as a packer and leg cutter for nearly a decade, making thousands of cuts a day. She had surgery three times on her hands, has arthritic legs and says she can’t scrub floors or lift heavy pots.

“I feel bitter and angry,” she said. “Ain’t no job I can get where I can use my hands occasionally.”

Workers such as Watson often don’t have many options, either because of the scarcity of job opportunities or limited education.

Another injured worker, Bev Whaley, said she had surgery on her right hand because of her job at the Morrell plant in Sioux Falls. She said a doctor told her she’d have to “learn to live with it. I wanted to take a baseball bat and smash his hands and tell him he’d have to learn to live with it.”

Her union local claims assembly line speeds have increased in many areas, for example, in the beef kill department--where the animal is knocked out, its throat slit, the hide pulled off and the body split in half--the hourly rate jumped from 105 an hour in 1979 to 193 in 1986.

Said co-worker Kellen, “You’re just pushed to the limit.”

But companies dispute the charges. Poultry producer Perdue Farms Inc. recently estimated repetitive trauma disorders at its plants at less than 1%.

And though OSHA contends Morrell knew conditions were causing injuries but did nothing, company spokesman Raoul Baxter said safety-improvement efforts were being made and the agency reviewed records during an atypical time--a period that included a strike.

In 11 months, records showed 880 of 2,000 workers sustained repetitive strain injuries. Baxter said there are no quick-fix programs for such injuries. “It’s going to take a lot of hard work,” he said. “Our progress has been dramatic.”

Morrell says injuries at Sioux Falls fell per 100 workers from 70.5 in January, 1988, to 13.48 in July, 1989. Baxter attributed the high injury rate to the hiring of replacements and other strike effects; for the decline, he credited outside consultants, workers and supervisors.

But Jim Lyon, union local president, said he hasn’t seen any safety progress and said company numbers are “totally inaccurate.” He also contends a program providing prizes for injury-free records encourages people not to report them.

Morrell isn’t the only meatpacker to come under government scrutiny.

OSHA also fined the nation’s largest meatpacker, IBP Inc., but a $5.7-million penalty was reduced to $975,000 after the company agreed to conduct a three-year safety program to reduce motion injuries.

A recent workplace institute study of several large penalties found OSHA had bargained down fines from $29.3 million to $9.5 million.

And in cases where OSHA fines are smaller--in the thousands of dollars--the agency “is not effective in providing the stimulus employers need to properly deal with safety and health,” said John Moran, a former official of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. “The bottom line in business is the dollar bill.”

OSHA’s Zettler said his agency usually doesn’t reduce penalties by more than half. In IBP’s case, he said, “we believe the significant reduction was justified by what we were getting back.”

Zettler also conceded OSHA doesn’t have staff to inspect all hazardous places annually and it may cost more to comply than pay a penalty. “If it takes us 15 years to get there, the guy has saved that investment for 15 years,” he said.

But he says his agency has increased safety awareness and most major companies have health experts. Many also have hired safety design experts.

One is the University of Michigan’s Center for Ergonomics.

Director Don Chaffin believes it’s simplistic to blame productivity alone for increased injuries and says corporations are paying more attention to these concerns.

But one union local disagrees. At the Allegheny Ludlum Corp.’s plant in Brackenridge, Pa., maintenance division injuries jumped from 27% to 45-47% during four heavy overtime months in 1988, said Carol Mochak, USW local 1196’s safety chairman.

“People tend to overlook a lot of safety procedures,” he said. “They’re lax in wearing safety equipment. All they want to do is get the job done as quickly as possible.”

A spokesman for the specialty steelmaker said the company tries hard to limit overtime and has no serious safety problems.

Productivity also has been an issue in construction, said Moran, the former NIOSH official who now works at a firm that trains hazardous-waste cleanup workers.

“It’s been getting worse for the last several years--the economic pressures, the greater and greater emphasis on cutting costs,” he said.

“It’s ‘get it done faster.’ If you’re laying a pipeline, you save money as a contractor by not putting in proper shielding or shoring in the trench.”

He said in 96% of trench cave-in deaths he studied at NIOSH, there was no shoring or sloping.

Shortcuts in the name of efficiency are ultimately uneconomical, said Berkowitz of the United Food and Commercial Workers. “Any gains made by pushing people will be eaten up by high turnover and worker compensation.”

As for Kellen, he has agreed to a workers’ compensation settlement of about $16,600.

But he has doubts about the quality of his life. “What’s the price on your hands?” he asked. “You’ve got to provide for your family. There was a time when everybody thought of retiring there after 30 years. I don’t look for any future there at all. It’s a sad deal.”