MARCH 9, 2001

Swift votes in House, Senate
rescind ergonomics rules

The U.S. House on Wednesday followed the lead taken by the Senate a day earlier and voted, 223 to 206, to kill ergonomics regulations implemented in the final week of the Clinton administration. The measure now goes to President Bush, who has indicated he will sign it.

All seven Republican members of North Carolina’s House delegation voted to kill the ergonomics rules and were joined by Seventh District Democrat Mike McIntyre. In the Senate’s 56-44 vote Tuesday, Republican Sen. Jesse Helms voted to nullify the new regulations and Democrat John Edwards voted for them.

The swift action by the House and Senate to pass Senate Joint Resolution 6 was the first time Congress has used the Congressional Review Act, a law enacted with little fanfare five years ago that allows the legislative branch, within a 60-day time window, to review and disapprove of regulations promulgated by Executive Branch agencies, in this case the U.S. Department of Labor.

Meanwhile in Raleigh, state Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry, acting on a request filed by NCCBI, issued a declaratory ruling that her predecessor had acted incorrectly in November when he adopted the federal ergonomics rules as a state standard. Berry’s predecessor, Harry Payne, had adopted the federal ergonomics regulations by reference as the standard that would be followed in North Carolina, which operates its own OSHA program.

If Berry had not rescinded Payne’s action, then the ergonomics regulations would still have applied in North Carolina even though they were rejected at the national level.

Commenting on the developments, NCCBI President Phil Kirk said  “it’s great that common sense prevails in Washington and in North Carolina in repealing the unwise and hasty action of the Clinton Administration and the administration of former Labor Commissioner Harry Payne in North Carolina.”

Citing recent government statistics showing a continuing decline in workplace injuries, Kirk added that “the business community is doing a good job of reducing workplace injuries without burdensome and costly government regulations and we will continue to emphasize voluntary compliance with worker health and safety issues.

Kirk commended the unanimous vote of the Republican members of North Carolina’s congressional delegation and he particularly thanked Democrat McIntyre for his vote. “I was pleased to receive a return call from Cong. McIntrye after the vote. He indicated it was a tough vote but he was pleased to stand with the business community on this issue.”

The ergonomics rules, 10 years in development, were intended to address the causes and lead to the prevention of so-called muscoskeletal disorders (MSDs) of the lower back, arms and legs. Although the cause of MSDs remains uncertain after years of research, such injuries often are associated with jobs that require repetitive motions and heavy lifting. However, much research on the issue, including an extensive report recently issued by the National Academy of Sciences, could not conclusively identify the causes of MSDs or offer firm guidance on how workplaces could be adjusted to prevent them.

NCCBI in December joined a national coalition of business groups suing to halt implmeentation of he ergonomics rules. The suit contended that the rules ignore legitimate scientific debate over the causes of musculoskeletal disorders, supersede state worker compensation laws and were so broad and vague that they covers more than 100 million employees by OSHA’s own estimates.

NCCBI’s main complaint against the rules was that implementing them would cost huge amounts of money to achieve uncertain results. Plus, the rules as written were so vague and broadly written that they were a regulatory nightmare, hitting everyone from giant corporations to mom and pop stores, from the state house to the school house. As NCCBI said in letters sent last month to all members of the state congressional delegation, the ergonomics standard “would place a huge burden on business and industry as well as state agencies, school systems and local governments.”

NCCBI and others also argued that the rules were a regulatory nightmare. “Under the standard, employers must instruct all employees to promptly report any symptoms of muscoskeletal disorders whether or not they were work related,” the association said in the letter to the congressional delegation. “If medical attention is required, the employer must pay for a detailed opinion from up to three health care providers. If the employee is unable to work during recuperation from the MSD, the employer must pay the employee 90 percent of his or her pay, and full benefits up to 90 days,” the letter continued.

Kirk expressed thanks to Tom West, the Poyner and Spruill attorney who he said has done a “superb” job representing NCCBI in ergonomics issues for the past two years, including the pivotal appeal to Labor Commissioner Berry to rescind the state ergonomics standard.

Kirk added that grassroots lobbying by NCCBI members was instrumental in building support for repeal at the state and federal level. He thanked members for contributing to a fund that supported NCCBI’s legal expenses against ergonomics.

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"The swift action to overturn 10 years of work on the regulation underscores that, no matter how close the November election was, the balance of power has shifted dramatically in Washington."
-- Washington Post

Ergonomics vote shows
renewed clout of business

On Capitol Hill, many observers said the rapid-fire votes in Congress to rescind the ergonomics regulations demonstrates that business interests are more united and much more influential now than at any time in a decade. As the Washington Post said: “In a blitzkrieg that lasted less than a week, corporate America scored one of its biggest victories in years, and organized labor, despite its increased clout in political campaigns over recent years, suffered a major defeat.”

The swift action to overturn 10 years of work on the regulation underscores that, no matter how close the November election was, the balance of power has shifted dramatically in Washington, the Post said.
 
Every day for a week, at 6 p.m., business lobbyists met in the office of House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) to discuss strategy and count votes. Organized labor fought hard, too, but with less impact. An aide to one Democratic senator who voted against the rule reported receiving 10 phone calls from business people for each call he received from labor.

The Washington paper noted that “despite Democratic gains that produced a 50-50 split in the Senate and a narrower margin of GOP control in the House, Republicans demonstrated that they still control Congress, at least when they are more disciplined and united than Democrats. In the Senate, instead of a close vote Tuesday night reflecting the even party split, six Democrats bolted to join all 50 Republicans, producing a 56 to 44 victory for the GOP and its business allies. In the House, 16 Democrats, mostly from the South, joined 207 Republicans in voting for the measure.

All six Democratic senators who voted in favor of a repeal are from states carried by Bush. Three of them, Sens. John Breaux (La.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and Ernest F. Hollings (S.C.), had voted last year for a proposal to cut off funding for finalizing the rule. Of the other three, two -- Mary Landrieu (La.) and Max Baucus (Mont.) -- are up for reelection next year in conservative-leaning states where business has more clout than unions. The sixth, Sen. Zell Miller (Ga.), has lined up with Republicans on many major issues.
 
Some of the lobbying techniques were unusually creative. Timothy Hammonds, president of the Food Marketing Institute, which represents 22,000 grocery stores, delivered 22 frozen turkeys early yesterday to House members. All weighed more than 15 pounds each, the limit set by the ergonomics rule to avert back strain among workers. The six Senate Democrats who voted against the rule also got turkeys.