Senate Overturns Ergonomics Rules on Worker Safety

The Republican-led Senate voted Tuesday to kill new rules that established the first federal standard for ergonomics in the workplace, and President Bush signaled he would support the regulatory rollback.

The unusually rapid Senate action, following a brief and fiery partisan debate, elated business and enraged labor. The vote to nullify the rules was 56-44. The Republican-led House could follow suit as early as today.

The rules in question, issued in the final weeks of the Clinton administration, are meant to require employers to adopt the principle of ergonomics--namely, fitting work conditions to the physical capacity of workers.

Nearly 2 million workers each year suffer from work-related conditions known as musculoskeletal disorders, caused by repetitive, awkward or stressful motions, according to estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that some experts call conservative. Examples are carpal tunnel syndrome, tendinitis and herniated spinal discs--but not injuries caused by slips, trips or accidents.

While most Democrats have championed the federal ergonomics rules, the idea of federal intervention was first raised in 1990 by a Republican labor secretary, Elizabeth Hanford Dole, who served under the current president’s father.

But the new Bush administration has embraced the arguments of business interests, which view the final rules produced by Clinton’s Labor Department as unworkable and unreliable.

“These regulations would cost employers, large and small, billions of dollars annually while providing uncertain benefits,” the White House said.

“If implemented, they would require employers to establish burdensome and costly new systems intended to track, prevent and provide compensation for an extremely broad class of injuries whose cause is subject to considerable dispute.”

The administration statement confirmed what congressional Republicans have said privately for several days--that Bush would support a congressional resolution to nullify the new rules.

Tuesday’s developments gave fresh evidence of the effect of the realignment of power in Washington, with Republicans controlling Congress and the White House for the first time since the 1950s.

Former President Clinton, a Democrat, repeatedly fended off attempts by the Republican-led Congress to stop action on ergonomics.

Now, participants on both sides acknowledge that the fate of the rules, along with the resolution of many other business-labor disputes, may have been sealed when Bush was declared the victor last year over Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore.

Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.), the assistant majority leader, mocked the rules as “the most expensive, intrusive regulations ever promulgated, certainly by the Department of Labor and maybe by any department in history.”

Nickles said the rules would allow “federal bureaucrats” to tell moving companies, grocers or bottlers, for example, how many workers they would need to unload goods. “There is no way in the world that a lot of companies could comply with this rule,” he said.

But Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) ripped Republicans for rushing the nullification through Congress using special parliamentary tactics that allowed little debate.

“It’s a major weakening in terms of the protections for American workers,” Kennedy said. “If we are not going to protect them now, there is no one that is going to protect them. . . . We know the people that are going to be constantly hurt--working families hurt, day in, day out.”

Six of 50 Democrats, mainly Southerners, broke party ranks to vote with all 50 Republicans for the resolution repealing the rule. They were Sens. Zell Miller of Georgia, Blanche Lambert Lincoln of Arkansas, Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina, Max Baucus of Montana and John B. Breaux and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, irate at the six, said: “The votes of Democratic senators who gave cover to this assault on worker safety are especially dishonorable.”

Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer of California opposed the repeal.

Labor and business lobbyists worked the issue in full force.

Union officials, campaigning with the slogan “Stop the Pain: Start the Healing,” made a frantic, final push to save what they consider one of the most important accomplishments of the Clinton years. The AFL-CIO, noting that women suffer repetitive-motion injuries disproportionately, held news conferences that featured women who had suffered crippling disorders in a poultry plant, a public school and an Internet company.

Business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Assn. of Manufacturers countered that the rules would overwhelm employers, forcing them to comply with vaguely worded standards at untold billions of dollars in expense. Employers circulated on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to tell senators and reporters how the rules would hurt them; one Virginia restaurant owner with 300 employees said it would cost him at least $53,000 a year.

The rules, issued by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration on Nov. 14, took effect on Jan. 16, four days before Clinton left office. With exceptions for maritime, agricultural, construction and railroad industries and some other employers, most businesses in America--including those in California covered by the state’s own, less-detailed ergonomics standard--are required to comply by Oct. 16.

As a first step, employers are required to tell employees about the risks and symptoms of common musculoskeletal disorders and set up a system to receive reports of such injuries. The government has estimated that the ailments force at least 600,000 workers each year to take time off.

When employers receive verified reports of work-related musculoskeletal disorders, the rules require further steps. Some problems, according to the rules, can be solved by “quick fixes”--presumably inexpensive--such as adjusting the height of a desk or work platform.

But other problems might require more extensive response--an ergonomics safety program including, according to the rules, “management leadership,” “employee participation,” “job hazard analysis” and “hazard reduction and control measures.”

Critics were irate over a provision that would allow employees to claim that a preexisting condition is work-related if the condition is “significantly aggravated” by the workplace.

Businesses also complained about a provision that would require employers to offer light-duty work to employees with covered disorders for at least three months with full pay and benefits, or, failing that, three months off with at least 90% of their regular pay.

The Clinton administration estimated that the regulations would cost employers $4.5 billion a year to implement but would save them billions of dollars more on workers’ compensation. Business groups scoffed at those figures and said the cost could be as much as $100 billion annually.

Normally, Democrats in the evenly divided Senate are able to threaten a filibuster to block legislation they oppose. It takes 60 votes to end such a maneuver.

But Republicans, in their action Tuesday, relied on a little-known 1996 law that enables Congress to repeal major new regulations with the approval of the president. Under its terms, debate was limited to 10 hours and Democrats were unable to filibuster.

The 1996 law, known as the Congressional Review Act, has until now never been successfully invoked. One effort to nullify a health regulation failed in the Senate in September of that year.

If, as expected, Republicans prevail on ergonomics, their use of the review act may have broader implications. For one, Democrats said Republicans could be emboldened to use the act to wipe out other rules that businesses oppose. “It can be brought to bear on agriculture regulations, on energy regulations,” said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). “This is not just an isolated instance.”

Democrats also charge that the language of the act would prevent future efforts to make meaningful ergonomics rules unless Congress gives permission.

But Republicans said that was not so.

Labor Secretary Elaine Chao said in a letter Tuesday to Sen. James M. Jeffords (R-Vt.) that she would continue to pursue “a comprehensive approach to ergonomics” even if the current rule is killed. Chao said she remained open to crafting a new rule that would “provide employers with achievable measures that protect their employees before injuries occur.”