Workplace Ergonomics Rules Face Key Test in State : Safety: Controversial standards would be first in the nation. Board’s ruling is expected to have national impact.

Are the walking wounded in the American work force--a rapidly expanding group including everyone from supermarket cashiers with carpal tunnel syndrome to meat packers suffering from tendinitis--finally going to get major help from government regulators?

The answer will become clearer today when the board that sets California’s workplace safety standards votes on a package of regulations that would be the nation’s first comprehensive ergonomics program. The proposed program, which would apply to every employer and employee in the state, is designed to curb cumulative trauma disorders, the painful ailments linked to repetitive motions.

Today’s decision by the six-member state Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board in San Diego will resonate across the country. It is being followed closely by federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials struggling to draft an ergonomics program of their own.

If the current California plan is defeated--and if it later is replaced by a weaker measure, or nothing at all--federal authorities might pull back on the controversial issue. If it passes, some observers say it could reinvigorate federal workplace regulators, whose efforts have run into resistance.

“What’s going on in California is a reflection of the forces coming to bear on this kind of proposal” across the country, said Maggie Robbins, coordinator of health and safety issues for the western region of the Service Employees International Union.

The state’s proposed standard--a toned-down version of a plan that the Cal/OSHA staff drafted late last year--has been branded as too burdensome by some business leaders and too weak by union officials and other safety advocates.

Thwarting efforts to craft a compromise have been the complex and unpredictable politics of cumulative trauma disorders, which have increased explosively to become the leading occupational illness in America. Last week’s smashing Republican election victories around the country could complicate matters further by prompting regulators to re-evaluate their stances.

For starters, the state’s proposal calls for employers to train all workers to alert them to the early symptoms of cumulative trauma disorders, which are also called CTDs or repetitive stress injuries. Employers also would have to set up procedures for employees to report such symptoms.

In addition, employers would need to make a one-time review of their medical, safety and workers’ compensation records to determine if their employees suffer CTD symptoms.

Then, for employers who have workers already experiencing such problems or have a solid reason to believe that the employees could develop such problems, remedial measures would be required.

Employers, however, would have a relatively free hand in coming up with solutions, as long as those solutions worked.

“They have a lot of flexibility in deciding how to go about it,” said Lloyd W. Aubry Jr., director of the California Department of Industrial Relations, which oversees Cal/OSHA. “One company might give people working on VDTs (video display terminals) more breaks. Another company might make equipment changes.”

In other cases, the problems might be handled simply through stepped-up training.

One irony in the opposition from business groups is that the state Legislature mandated an ergonomics program in its 1993 workers’ compensation reform package as a way to help cut employers’ costs for workers’ compensation coverage.

The most recent U.S. statistics report 281,800 cases of such disorders in 1992, up more than twelvefold from a decade earlier.

Indeed, earlier this year, many workplace safety advocates had high hopes that authorities both in California and Washington would take substantial steps toward combatting CTDs. The state Legislature told Cal/OSHA to pass its ergonomics program by Jan. 1, and federal officials promised to submit a preliminary program by Sept. 30.

But circumstances have changed substantially in the last two months. Facing intensified opposition from employers and bogged down in tedious analyses, federal OSHA missed its self-imposed September deadline and is not saying when its initial proposal will come out.

In California, meanwhile, speculation is building that the board may ignore its year-end deadline for adopting a program and go back to the drawing board.

After Cal/OSHA in September released the current version of the proposal--which was intended to be the final version--97 letters arrived from various interest groups objecting to the plan. Given that opposition, “the board might say, ‘Why are we doing this? No one wants it,’ ” Aubry said.

“Gradually, as the proposal became better known, and more and more employers began looking at it more closely, they said, ‘Wait a minute, this is going to cost more than we thought,’ ” he added.

Employers in California and across the country contend that, given the lack of scientific data concerning ergonomic problems and solutions, it is premature for regulators to impose potentially costly and burdensome programs.

“It is a very complex, very difficult subject about which the scientific and medical communities are very much up in the air. This is not something we know how to correct,” said Jeffrey M. Tanenbaum, a San Francisco lawyer representing employers opposed to the California proposal.

He said it also is unfair to place burdens on employers for CTDs that stem from off-the-job activities or that may be largely psychosomatic.

“These cases seem to grow in a workplace. If one person thinks they have a repetitive stress injury, it’s not surprising to see someone else think they may have it too,” Tanenbaum argued.

On the other hand, supporters of ergonomics regulations--including employers such as Blue Cross of California that have adopted plans of their own--say substantial anecdotal evidence already shows that crippling CTDs can be prevented.

Unions and other safety advocates critical of the proposed California standard, however, say the current plan contains too many loopholes. Among other things, it would not require employers to provide medical attention for employees with early symptoms of CTDs unless the employees filed workers’ compensation claims.

In addition, the plan would exempt employers who demonstrate that a remedial plan would impose an undue economic hardship. Robbins of the service employees union says that might enable rogue employers to bamboozle OSHA inspectors and avoid dealing with serious health problems. Also, she said, it would place honest employers at a competitive disadvantage.

“Are we going to have accountants go out with health inspectors? I don’t think so,” Robbins said.

“If we want to treat employers fairly, we need to treat them all the same,” she added.