U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

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Oral Testimony of Elaine L. Chao on Ergonomics Standards
Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions

April 18, 2002

Chairman Kennedy, Senator Gregg, and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to appear before you today on the subject of ergonomics.

As I listened to your opening statements, I was reminded of Lord Tennyson's immortal lines:

Cannon to the right of them,
Cannon to the left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered….

Ergonomics has long been a highly-charged and controversial subject - on which people have strongly-held and, in many cases, diametrically opposed points of view. But it need not be that way, if we agree that our ultimate goal is to protect workers as quickly and effectively as possible.

I am confident that our comprehensive plan on ergonomics will achieve the goal of protecting workers from musculoskeletal injuries - with quick, lasting results. In fact, our plan goes much further than the old, rejected ergonomics rule - by seeking to prevent injuries before they occur, and by having the capacity to protect a much broader range of workers who are at risk.

Our plan integrates four essential components that complement and reinforce each other: industry- and task-specific guidelines, vigorous enforcement, a battery of dedicated compliance assistance efforts, and expanded research to help us continuously upgrade the ergonomic protections available to workers.

Most importantly, our plan accomplishes what the old regulation could not, even after ten years and $10 million. It protects real workers in real workplaces, starting now.

Today, I am announcing our first industry-specific guidelines initiative, to protect workers in nursing homes. These workers play a vital role in caring for the needs of the elderly and infirm. But in the course of caring for others, they are frequently exposed to significant risks to their own health and safety - especially from ergonomic hazards.

As you may know, the majority of nursing home workers are low-wage earners; many are low-skilled, and many are women. In the last decade or so, recent immigrants have become a major source of nursing home labor. Many of them have only limited English proficiency, let alone an understanding of U.S. labor laws.

A substantial percentage of nursing home workers do not have legal immigration status - that's the reality of what we're dealing with. All of this makes it very difficult for these employees to take steps, on their own, to protect themselves better on the job.

That's why now is the time - today - to start taking care of these caregivers. Not two years, not three years, not ten years from now - but today.

Our new initiative will establish effective, workable guidelines to quickly reduce ergonomic injuries among these deserving and vulnerable workers. These guidelines will build on our ground-breaking, pro-worker settlement in the Beverly Enterprises case - where we required, for the first time ever, ergonomically-safe lifting programs in well over 200 nursing home facilities. As one senior labor leader said of our work on that case, "Nursing home workers suffer crippling back injuries, and now help is finally on the way."

That's the message I bring to all of you today: help is finally on the way.

Our success in the Beverly Enterprises case proves that we can protect workers from ergonomic injuries with the tools we have - right now.

But this is only the beginning.

We are in the process of reaching out to representatives of nursing home workers as well as nursing home operators - to try to find common ground on reducing ergonomic hazards in these workplaces. We all agree that workers have an interest in achieving this goal, but so do employers. The truth is, as many employers already know and practice, protecting your workers is just good business sense.

Our plan is to bring these interests together to develop creative, effective solutions that will prevent injuries - and get them implemented as quickly as possible. We will use outreach and training efforts to reinforce these solutions and maximize their use.

This is the approach we will adopt not only in nursing homes, but also in other industries where workers face high risks of ergonomic injuries. In most cases, bringing employers and workers together will be the most effective way to get injury rates down - in the short run, and in the long run.

In that vein, I want to commend the nursing home operators that have agreed to work with us, and with their workers, to make their facilities ergonomically safer.

That's the kind of cooperation we seek and expect. But we also intend to exert leadership - and pressure - to get the results we need to adequately protect workers.

That is why our comprehensive ergonomics plan includes not only collaborative guidelines, but also committed enforcement.

I truly believe that most employers want to do the right thing by their employees. Some companies already invest large sums of money in tools and technologies that help prevent ergonomic injuries. But to those employers who stubbornly refuse to safeguard their workers from identifiable, work-related ergonomic hazards, I have a word of warning: our law defends the safety and health of every worker - and we will enforce that law.

Our enforcement strategy will build on the approach that delivered real victories for workers in the Beverly Enterprises case. By combining enforcement with compliance assistance techniques, new research and development, and industry-specific guidelines, we can move quickly to get workers the help they need.vings.

Of course, I realize that the approach we are pursuing - which sets the highest priority on protecting workers immediately - still won't satisfy everyone, including members of this Committee.

A number of you strongly backed the last Administration's ergonomics rule - and would like it to be essentially reinstated - even though it was extremely controversial and ultimately rejected by a majority of your colleagues, both Democrat and Republican.

There are also interest groups out there that would prefer us to do nothing - who argue that ergonomic injuries simply don't exist, or at least they don't deserve the level of intervention our plan provides.

I'll be the first to admit that there are some things our plan doesn't do that tend to make Washington comfortable. It will not generate thousands of pages of entries in the Federal Register. It will not keep armies of lawyers and lobbyists busy, as they figure out ways to attack the plan, or expand parts of it, or shrink parts of it. It will not make for good mail copy for groups to send to their members to inflame them.

And it will not take years to promulgate, litigate and legislate to get results.

Instead, our ergonomics plan is designed to do is just one thing: protect workers as quickly and effectively as possible.

Before I conclude, I would just like to introduce the person sitting next to me.

The assistant secretary for OSHA at the Department of Labor, John Henshaw, has years of real-life experience in occupational safety and health. Unlike most people in Washington, he has personally designed and implemented health and safety plans that achieved measurable benefits for workers.

Throughout this process, I have valued John's integrity and experience as we have crafted an ergonomics plan that will succeed in protecting America's workers.

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