U.S. to Resume Effort for Standards to Ease RSI

The Clinton administration will resume its drive to develop ergonomic standards aimed at preventing costly repetitive stress injuries in the workplace, Labor Secretary Robert Reich said Tuesday.

The effort, which had been blocked by Congress, will resume with an open solicitation for information, he said. It is aimed at tackling the fastest-growing and costliest of workplace injuries, accounting for a third of the $60 billion in annual workers’ compensations costs.

“Here we have a great deal of evidence, mounting evidence, that a problem exists,” Reich said. “It is not fair to the American worker, to the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people exposed to repetitive stress injuries every day at the workplace, to deny them the opportunity for the full airing of the issues, the data and the possible range of solutions.”

A draft of a proposed ergonomics standard developed by the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration two years ago was sidetracked when Congress blocked the agency from spending any money to continue the effort during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.

The National Coalition of Ergonomics, an organization of business groups, said any new regulations would be based on “unsound” assumptions.

“At this time no consensus exists as to the causes of and, more important, any cures for repetitive stress injuries,” group spokesman Al Lundeen said.

Reich, who plans to leave the administration next month, said the drive to come up with standards aimed at preventing RSI will continue regardless of who replaces him as labor secretary.

In the new effort, however, the administration said it will seek consensus around specific types of RSI problems by involving experts from labor, academia and business.

The most common causes of RSI are assembly-line speedups, repetitive and heavy lifting, and long hours typing at keyboards.