Senator wants to slow down ergonomics proposal
Senator wants to slow down ergonomics proposal
May be a disservice to those it should protect
The proposed ergonomics rule continues to face problems, with a recent congressional vote and criticism from Republican Senators threatening to slow the bill’s approval.
The House of Representatives recently voted to stop the government from issuing final ergo-nomics rules, though President Clinton has indicated that he favors the rule and would veto any legislation standing in the way. The House vote concerned language added to a bill by Rep. Anne Northup (R-KY). The provision blocking the ergonomics rule was added to a $339.5 billion measure financing education, labor, and health programs for 2001.
The Occupational Safety and Health Admini-stration intends to finalize the rule by the end of the year, and there was no immediate response from OSHA or the White House regarding Northup’s roadblock. Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) is urging his colleagues in a letter he sent them recently to look beyond the politics of the federal government’s proposed ergonomics rule to concentrate more on the rule-making process and the rule itself.
Enzi pointed out that the rule may harm nursing home and homebound patients, interfere with states’ workers compensation systems, and otherwise do a disservice to the workers it is meant to protect.
Will paid witnesses taint process?
Enzi, chairman of the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Subcommittee on Employ-ment, Safety and Training, said he also is concerned that the rule-making process may have been tainted by OSHA’s use of contractors during the recent comment period. According to OSHA documents supplied by Enzi’s office, OSHA paid 28 witnesses $10,000 each to provide testimony during the rule-making hearings that are part of the required notice and comment period.
Several Republicans gave their support to Enzi and asked colleagues for their help in passing an amendment to the upcoming Labor Health and Human Services appropriations bill: Sens. Sam Brownback of Kansas, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Tim Hutchinson of Arkansas, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, and Kit Bond of Missouri.
The appropriations bill will delay OSHA’s implementation of the rule for one year. OSHA officials have said they plan to have the ergo-nomics rule approved by the end of the year.
Enzi says Congress must take steps to force OSHA to take the necessary time to ensure that the many problems with the high-impact rule are worked out and that Congress has sufficient time to examine OSHA’s rule-making process.
"It is incumbent upon us to make sure OSHA takes sufficient time to consider all aspects and effects of its proposed rule so that it acts not for political reasons, but in a manner that is well informed, logical, and in the best interest of workplace safety and health," the senators wrote.
Since the proposed rule was published in November 1999, Enzi has criticized the plan and said OSHA has so far ignored the possible impacts the rule would have on Medicaid and Medicare recipients. Elderly patients who depend on Medicaid and Medicare for coverage of nursing homes stays, home health services, or other inpatient care could see their access to these services compromised due to the requirements imposed by the proposed ergonomics rule and the reimbursement caps of Medicaid and Medicare, he said.
OSHA’s ergonomics rule would raise health care costs, he contends, but the costs could not be absorbed by the patients and health care providers who are limited by the Medicare and Medicaid caps. Enzi says the rule could result in facilities closing, quality of patient care decreasing, and the immediate need for Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement levels to be increased.
"Elderly and poor patients are already in danger of losing quality care," the senators wrote. "Requiring an industry that is currently in such a financial crisis to implement such a sweeping and expensive change as the proposed ergonomics rule is simply more than this industry can bear. OSHA does not appear to have considered any of these consequences, and it has given Congress no notice that its proposed rule could require Congress to increase Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement."
In a hearing he held earlier this year, Enzi argued that another provision of the proposed ergonomics rule — the Work Restriction Protec-tion provision — in effect creates a federal system of workers’ compensation that must be administered by OSHA.
He said that in addition to destroying the intricate and delicately balanced systems employees and employers have agreed to, the proposed rule is a direct violation of the law that established OSHA.
Enzi contended that OSHA’s use of contractors is another potential problem with the rule. In total, OSHA has at least 70 contractors to work on the rule and paid them a total of $1.75 million, including the 28 witnesses paid to testify at the rule-making hearings. Enzi said he — along with Rep. David McIntosh (R-IN) — will bring to bear full Congressional scrutiny of this issue.
"It appears at least some of OSHA’s use of contractors may be inappropriate," the senators wrote.
Enzi said those are only a few of the reasons to support action that would allow OSHA and Congress more time to understand the ramifications of the rule.
"A one-year delay on this rule is reasonable. Given the huge impact this rule would have on nearly every segment of society, it only makes sense to have a thorough understanding of what that impact would be and how OSHA is going about analyzing the impact. If you are concerned about even one of these potential problems, then supporting a delay is prudent."
Bond also calls for withdrawal of rule
In another letter, this one to OSHA head Charles Jeffress, Bond renewed his call for the withdrawal of OSHA’s proposed regulation on ergonomics after the agency admitted that as many as 10 million employees from state and local government, the United States Postal Service, and the railroad industry were not included in the original economic analysis.
"By failing to include these employees in the economic analysis, OSHA is confirming my long-held belief that the agency is clueless about the impact of the proposed ergonomics regulation," said Bond, chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business.
Even more troubling, according to Bond, was the fact that OSHA relied on sources such as the AFL-CIO for the number of ergonomics-related injuries suffered by employees in the state and local government sector.
"Organized labor’s support for this rule is widely known, and to rely on their numbers for determining the cost merely pushes OSHA’s credibility to a new low," Bond said. "This is truly asking the fox to count the chickens in the hen house."
For estimating the number of injuries to postal workers, OSHA relied on claims with the Federal Office of Workers Compensation Programs for "exertion" injuries. "This classification is even more vague than musculoskeletal disorders," Bond argued.
"For OSHA to have no clearer definition of what injuries were incurred by all these 10 million employees, clearly demonstrates an inadequate foundation of data to proceed with the regulation," Bond concluded.
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