Give the Safety Cop Some Muscle

With minor changes, an acerbic cartoon drawn in the 1940s might well be used today to ridicule employers and politicians fighting proposed laws to protect workers from on-the-job injuries and illnesses.

The old cartoon took on employers who were trying to kill a proposal to outlaw job discrimination. Some pickets were carrying signs urging passage of a Fair Employment Practices Act as they walked around a tough-looking boss sitting on the back of a prone black worker.

The boss, smirking, was saying, “Don’t force me, educate me!”

The cartoon today could be aimed squarely at those fighting proposed legislation aimed at reducing the tragically high and still growing number of workplace injuries and illnesses, especially those caused by repetitive motions in jobs such as those in meatpacking plants, grocery stores and computer-equipped offices.

Less well-known but as bad or worse on workers are jobs like fileting catfish in a Mississippi plant of Delta Pride Catfish Co., the nation’s largest fresh fish processor. Fileters must gut 32 fish a minute, and head saw operators must behead one a second.

Those and many other jobs are causing crippling, sometimes permanent injuries that can be prevented, yet it isn’t easy to get legislation requiring employers to help the millions of endangered workers who perform them.

Case in point: California Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) authored a rather weak bill that would only have required employers to make sure newly purchased video display terminals and desks and chairs used by VDT operators comply with general ergonomic guidelines set up by industry officials themselves.

The idea is simple enough: Don’t require workers to continue using the same motions quickly and repeatedly without regular breaks, and also give them equipment that puts the least possible strain on their bodies.

Hayden’s bill easily passed the Legislature. But mild as it was, Gov. George Deukmejian said it was just too rough on employers, so he vetoed it, even while conceding that the industry guidelines it would mandate were “commendable.”

The governor wanted to educate--not force--employers to follow safe workplace practices. He said the state should not require employers to follow their own guidelines because that would eliminate their “flexibility to address . . . VDT usage in a manner most appropriate and cost-effective for their individual workplaces.” In other words, employers should not be required to do anything about the problem.

Much more is needed than education courses for employers, although they are important. National uniform safety standards, fairly and rigorously enforced, are urgently needed. Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Hanford Dole says physical disabilities caused by workers rapidly repeating the same motion over and over on a job are now the nation’s leading occupational illness.

In 1981, 18% of all workplace illnesses were caused by repetitive motions. Now they make up almost half of such illnesses.

Deukmejian stopped the California Legislature’s feeble attempt to cope with the problem, but all states eventually may be forced to act sensibly by, surprisingly enough, the conservative Bush Administration.

Unfortunately, federal officials say that while they plan to mandate repetitive motion standards, it will take two or more years to develop them. When they are in force, though, all states must have their own standards that are at least as strong as the federal ones.

Dole and top officers of the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration have started what they call a major initiative to reduce repetitive motion illnesses, but initially OSHA will issue only voluntary guidelines.

When they do become mandatory, enforcement will remain a serious problem because OSHA, whose budget was sharply cut by former President Ronald Reagan, is still badly understaffed.

Enforcement would be substantially enhanced if OSHA regulations included a proposal requiring all companies to create joint labor-management safety and health committees. That would mean, in effect, putting a bipartisan inspection team in every workplace.

Alan McMillan, deputy assistant secretary of Labor, agrees that such committees would help protect workers, especially if they had real power to act. But he says the government is only going to strongly recommend their use, not require them. Once again, employers will be educated, not forced, to help themselves and their workers.

A major employer concern is the potential cost of changing work schedules and installing worker-friendly equipment to reduce repetitive motion illnesses. Also, despite the disturbing government figures, many companies, large and small, still insist that the illness complaints are overblown.

Jimmie Jones, general manager of the Vallejo (Calif.) Times-Herald, once urged a member of the Assembly in Sacramento to vote down an earlier version of Hayden’s proposed legislation, saying: “As one who has worked in the newspaper business for 28 years, I can state, without fear of contradiction, that stiff necks, tired eyes and sore backs go with any desk job, whether it be staring at a VDT screen or hunched over a typewriter or copy desk.”

But Secretary Dole and many others, including employers, contradict the newspaper executive. Moreover, OSHA’s McMillan says employers actually make money when they spend some to help workers avoid repetitive motion illnesses.

Savings on workers’ compensation alone would make up much of the cost involved and, McMillan says, all OSHA research shows that curbing those illnesses results in enormous increases in productivity, efficiency and product quality.

Employer education courses should continue, but strict enforcement of a law requiring employers to meet OSHA standards dealing with repetitive motion problems and mandated joint labor-management safety committees also are essential.