House Approves Repetitive Stress Injuries Study

In a defeat for Republican leaders trying to reduce federal regulation of business, the House voted Thursday to allow the government to issue guidelines on repetitive stress injuries, the nation’s fastest-growing workplace health problem.

The House voted, 216 to 205, to drop a GOP-backed provision that would have prohibited the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from developing “ergonomic” standards to help protect workers against such injuries.

Thirty-five Republicans, mostly moderates from the North, crossed party lines to vote to drop the ban. The measure also would have barred OSHA from collecting information on repetitive stress injuries.

OSHA estimates that 800,000 to 2.7 million cases of repetitive stress injury arise each year, a tenfold increase over the last decade, agency spokesman Stephen Gaskill said. The most common type is carpal tunnel syndrome, a painful wrist condition. Those most likely to be afflicted are keyboard operators, assembly-line workers and others engaged in repetitive motion in the workplace.

The vote came during House debate on a $66-billion social spending bill that would provide $7.9 billion less than the White House wants for education, health and other popular domestic programs.

The White House has threatened to veto the bill, even though the Republican spending levels are more generous compared to the politically explosive reductions that GOP members attempted to make in social programs last year.

The bill essentially would freeze spending for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education at 1996 levels and provide increases for selected programs such as biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health. The bill does not include many of the most controversial antiabortion and other social policy riders included in the measure last year, when GOP conservatives were still enjoying momentum from the sweeping Republican victory in the 1994 congressional elections.

However, the measure does address a litany of conservative social concerns. It calls for stepped up enforcement of laws denying illegal immigrants most benefits of federal social programs--and cuts off benefits for some programs for which they still qualify. It also would eliminate funding for Goals 2000, President Clinton’s signature education reform program.

While the House worked its way through the bill Thursday, the Senate ground to a standstill as rebellious lawmakers refused to cooperate with the repeated pleas of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) to end the “absolute gridlock” that has stalled floor action on several bills.

His failure proved to be a frustrating initiation to leadership for someone who had pledged to “get things done” when he assumed the Senate’s top position last month. After working diligently for weeks to form deals to push through health insurance reform, a minimum wage hike and a host of appropriations bills, he reached a breaking point Thursday.

“I’ve been reasonable but I’m not going to take this kind of gridlock,” Lott told reporters at midafternoon after he was not able to move a number of bills past Democratic objections.

The House vote on ergonomics was hailed by Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich, who called it “good government, plain and simple.”

“If injuries are occurring in the workplace, it’s up to the Labor Department to find a way to prevent them,” said Reich. “That’s our job.”

The House vote clears the way for OSHA to resume work on the guidelines for repetitive stress injuries. That work was interrupted last year when Congress enacted a law prohibiting the agency from putting forth guidelines or standards on repetitive stress injuries.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), sponsor of the amendment to kill the ergonomics ban, estimated that worker compensation costs arising from such injuries reach about $20 billion a year.

“The spirit of my amendment was to protect workers, protect business and to improve productivity,” Pelosi said. “Ignoring the fastest growing workplace health problem will not make it go away.”

However, the ban on guidelines was supported by trucking companies and other business interests that had complained that action by OSHA would have forced them to launch costly evaluations that would have been particularly burdensome for small businesses.

“People who love big government fail to understand . . . that there is not a staff of people at every business in this country that is prepared to handle such a lot of bureaucracy and rules,” said Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-Texas), sponsor of the ban.

Bonilla attributed his defeat on the House floor to election year pressures on members from organized labor, which opposed the ban. He noted that most of the Republicans who voted against his ban represent districts with heavy union representation and “fear the strong arm of labor.”

But Pelosi said that she won because Republicans were overreaching by trying to keep OSHA from even collecting information about these common workplace injuries.

Times staff writer Sam Fulwood III contributed to this story.