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By SARA FRITZ
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 5, 2001
WASHINGTON -- Republicans want to give young, low-wage female workers such as Ursula Stafford a tax cut. But their compassion for these women apparently stops short of helping to prevent them from injuring themselves on the job.
In 1999, Stafford, then a 130-pound paraprofessional working for the New York City school system, suffered permanent back injury when she carried out her assigned task of lifting a 250-pound paralyzed schoolgirl onto a toilet.
"I am 24 years old and I am angry because of what this has done to my future," Stafford, sobbing, said at a news conference sponsored by the AFL-CIO on Friday. "My employer, the New York City Board of Education, should have trained me on proper lifting procedures and provided mechanical lifting equipment that would have enabled me to do the job at no risk to myself. Because the student could not support her own weight, another trained person should have helped me."
Stafford's is the first of many such stories we will hear over the next week as Congress takes up legislation that would abolish workplace ergonomic rules put into effect by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on Jan. 16.
The opposition is led by the National Federation of Independent Business, which argues the rules will put many members out of business.
Business groups say the regulations would cost employers about $90-billion a year to implement. OSHA estimates the annual cost at $4.5-billion, but insists $9-billion in benefits will result by reducing injuries and time away from work.
Although it took OSHA 10 years to develop these regulations, opponents claim they were issued hastily by the Clinton administration after it became clear that Democrats were no longer going to be in charge of the executive branch after Jan. 20. Republicans have been hostile to this kind of rulemaking, and they have long opposed ergonomic standards.
Opponents of the regulations have an edge because they will be relying on a new law, the Congressional Review Act, which gives privileged status to the effort to kill OSHA's ergonomics rule.
If opponents prevail, OSHA would be banned from issuing new ergonomics rules that are similar to the current one. A victory by the opponents could delay ergonomics regulations for perhaps a decade.
President Bush has not said where he stands on this issue. Legislation revoking a regulation must be signed by the president.
It is unlikely that Bush would veto the legislation, thus angering the business interests that supported his presidency. Because Bush's tax cut plan includes no direct benefits for business, revoking the ergonomics regulations is seen as a way for Republicans to compensate their business supporters.
Bush is likely to sign the legislation or propose a compromise under which OSHA would redraft the regulations more to the liking of business interests. This would infuriate organized labor, but that means little to Bush, who received little support from labor in the last election.
Still, it is a tough issue for Bush because it will be seen -- and rightly so -- as the first big test of his pledge to be a "compassionate conservative." Simply killing a regulation designed to prevent painful injuries to workers is not what most people would consider compassionate.
Women such as Stafford make this point better than anyone. Stafford could easily be one of the many young women that Bush has paraded before audiences over the last year to argue the case for his proposed tax cut.
The ergonomics regulations are, essentially, designed for the very people for whom Bush claims to have the most compassion: people struggling to make it into the middle class. If Bush wants to give Stafford a tax cut, but refuses to provide her with protection against workplace injuries, his oft-proclaimed compassion would seem less than genuine.
-- Sara Fritz can be reached by e-mail at fritz@sptimes.com or by phone at (202) 463-0576.
If not negated by Congress, the rules:
Require employers to provide workers by Oct. 14 information about repetitive motion injuries and symptoms, the importance of reporting them and risk factors.
Cover all employers but those covered by OSHA's construction, maritime or agriculture standards or railroads.
Do not require any other action by employers unless an injury is reported.
Do not apply to injuries caused by slips, trips, falls or vehicle accidents.
Cover only injuries only if they are work-related and require missed work, restricted work or medical treatment beyond first aid or the symptoms last seven or more days after reporting.
Allow workers to get a second health-care opinion about the need for work restrictions.
Require employer to provide injured worker free access to health-care professional for evaluation and follow-up and necessary temporary work restrictions.
Grant full pay and benefits to injured workers with temporary work restrictions. Employees removed from work must receive 90 percent of pay and 100 percent of benefits. This lasts for 90 days, until worker safely returns or a doctor determines worker can never return to former job.
Create a way to resolve disputes.