Meatpacker, OSHA Settle on Motion Injuries : Workplace: Morrell & Co. accord on treating repetitive-stress ailments may serve as a model for the industry.

John Morrell & Co., one of the nation’s largest meatpacking companies, has reached a settlement with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that is expected to serve as an industry model for treating repetitive-motion injuries, sources said Tuesday.

Under the agreement, which is scheduled to be announced today, Morrell will pay a fine of $990,000 and will make a $250,000 grant to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. A year ago the company was fined $4.3 million for safety conditions at its South Dakota plant.

The Labor Department has targeted the nation’s red meat industry in an effort to deal with the often crippling repetitive-motion injuries, which range from bursitis to carpal tunnel syndrome.

The agreement with Morrell covers the operations of its slaughtering and processing operations at Sioux Falls and is similar to an agreement signed in late 1988 with IBP Inc., the nation’s largest meatpacker. The Morrell agreement calls for the appointment of 15 “ergonomic monitors” to be picked by the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents company employees, and a study of all jobs in the plant by an outside expert in ergonomics.

Ergonomics is the science of making the workplace conform to the physical needs of the worker.

But sources said the medical treatment program agreed to by Morrell goes far beyond the agreement with IBP and requires the company to hire a noted neurologist from Johns Hopkins University to oversee the medical operations of the plant. Sources said the agreement would give the medical consultant wide discretion to change the Morrell program as she saw fit.

Injured workers at the Morrell plant, which slaughters and “disassembles” more than 1,000 cows and pigs a day, will be allowed to seek treatment from their own doctors. In the past, injured workers were required to seek treatment from company doctors at a Sioux Falls clinic that has a contract with the company. Employees who did not use the company doctor risked losing workers’ compensation.

Under the new agreement, workers can not only seek treatment from their own doctors, but can automatically go to a doctor after just two visits to the plant nurse. In the IBP agreement, workers have to wait a specific amount of time before they can see their doctors.