Labor Department Issues New Set of Proposals for RSI Rules : Standards: Less would be demanded of employers, and fewer of them would be affected.

In a new try at drafting rules covering repetitive strain injuries, the Labor Department is proposing standards that are far less demanding on employers than those in a blueprint developed last year.

The draft, released Monday, comes just days after the House voted to cut the Labor Department’s budget in retaliation for its refusal to honor Republicans’ calls for a moratorium on federal safety regulations.

“I’m convinced that what we’re doing is directly responsive to congressional concern about having regulations which have good science, good economics and informed comment from affected industries and workers,” said Joe Dear, the assistant secretary of labor in charge of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. “All OSHA is doing is asking for more feedback. We want to know what works before we publish a proposed rule.”

The new proposed rules would be significantly less onerous to employers than those OSHA laid out last June, before Republicans took control of Congress.

Dear said the department narrowed the scope “because we’ve been listening to what employers, safety and health professionals and workers are saying about what’s being done now.”

The new rules would cover 2.6 million businesses rather than the 6.1 million of the earlier draft, and they would also apply to 21 million employees contrasted with 96 million before. Businesses would not need to review workers’ compensation and injury logs to identify work situations that could lead to ergonomic injuries, and they would not have to evaluate any programs they institute to correct ergonomic problems.

The draft is intended to address the more than 300,000 new cases of repetitive trauma disorders reported every year. The injuries, which once affected primarily meat cutters and assembly-line workers, has become more common as computer keyboards have become more widespread.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 90,000 U.S. workers lost time from their jobs in 1992 because of repetitive strain injuries.