Mandating the End of Manual Labor

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 20, 1999 | by Sean Paige

Put down those shovels, pickaxes, power tools and pile drivers, America: Uncle Sam is taking the work out of manual labor!

Over the objections of business and industry, which say the new mandates will cost them billions of dollars and potentially cripple productivity, the Clinton administration's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, is going forward with requiring new workplace ergonomics standards that it says will reduce the likelihood of repetitive-motion injuries and musculoskeletal disorders -- the stresses and strains that come from bending, hauling, lifting, lugging, toting, typing or, in one word, working.

Paper-pushing and regulation-writing, then, will be exempt -- meaning that the new rules will have little apparent effect on the biggest U.S. industry of all: finding new justifications for government meddling.

Food wholesalers just weeks ago released a study showing the new rules would mean $26 billion in onetime costs to the group's 242 companies -- amounting to one-quarter of their annual sales -- plus $6 billion in annual recurring costs. Other members of the antiergonomics coalition include the American Bankers Association, American Trucking Association, National Federation of Independent Business, United Parcel Service and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

But OSHA -- insisting that it knows better -- says that the rules only would cost U.S. business $4.5 billion and that repetitive-motion injuries resulted in 647,000 lost workdays in 1996, costing companies $15 billion to $20 billion in workers compensation payments.

This summer the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation that would block institution of the new ergonomic standards until the National Academy of Sciences further studies the need for them.

But the Senate failed to approve similar legislation before adjourning, allowing the administration -- which has shown a fondness for making policy through flat -- to move forward, over the objections of Congress, industry and other government agencies.

After all, federal law requires only that comments on new mandates be taken, not taken seriously.