Computer Injuries Jump Into Spotlight in Britain : Workplace: Newspaper employees threaten to strike over repetitive strain, and a court awards damages to phone company typists.
Two highly publicized events in Great Britain in the last few days--a union vote authorizing a strike at the prestigious Financial Times newspaper and a landmark court case involving phone company typists--have thrown the spotlight on the growing problem of repetitive strain injuries among the nation’s white-collar workers.
Like the United States, Britain has faced an ever-increasing number of RSI cases among workers whose jobs require long hours at video display terminals. Sufferers complain of disabling pain, mainly in the arms, wrists and hands.
But because RSI has been linked to computer terminal-related work only in recent years, laws regulating employer responsibility in Britain are unclear or nonexistent.
Attention focused on the ailment this week is likely to speed the process of setting the rules. So will the pressure of a Jan. 1, 1993, deadline for British employers to comply with a European Commission directive setting standards for workplace conditions related to RSI.
At the Financial Times last Tuesday, union members on the editorial staff voted 173 to 67 to authorize a strike after the paper’s management proposed forcing nine staffers with RSI to take early retirement.
The union members also voted 217 to 22 to authorize industrial action short of a strike, such as work stoppages or other disruptive activities.
Managing Editor David Walker said the Financial Times “feels unable to keep on staff” the nine employees, some of whom have been incapacitated for three years. The paper has offered them pensions equal to the amount they would have accrued if they had worked through age 62 and to help them find non-editorial positions with Pearson, parent company of the Financial Times.
The National Union of Journalists, however, has asked the Financial Times to arrange for the RSI sufferers to continue in their editorial posts without having to use computer terminals.
Walker said that is impossible. If you can’t work at a computer, “you can’t be a journalist,” he said. “That’s a sad fact of life.”
Meanwhile, the first British court case to address employer culpability for employees suffering from RSI resulted last week in the awarding of damages to two British Telecom workers whose jobs required them to type on a computer terminal all day.
The nation’s largest phone company said it is considering an appeal in the case, which took six years to get to court.
Judge John Byrt ruled that the company was negligent in not providing work equipment, such as special chairs, that would prevent or hinder the onset of RSI.
But the judge ruled against the women’s complaint that the company was negligent in implementing work practices--including a requirement that they complete more than 10,000 keystrokes an hour--that contributed to their RSI.
While the issue of RSI is gaining more attention in Britain, medical care for sufferers remains appalling, said Ron Mulelly, chairman of the RSI Assn., a national support group outside London.
“There is a great lack of informed medical care here,” he said, complaining that government and medical officials have been “dismissive” of the malady.
