Guest Author - Anne Asher

The landscape of worker safety can get to be pretty political. Finding out about your rights and responsibilities can land you in a muddle of acronyms, bi-partisan roughhousing, statistics, and agencies, coalitions and alliances with varying degrees of agendas. And, oh, the legalese!

The purpose of this article is to offer a simple overview of what the government is and is not offering, and how you might go about finding information from government and related sources.

Let's start with history. President Clinton was into ergonomic standards with the worker clearly in focus. Republicans did not like this, arguing that it would be difficult or impossible for business, especially small business to provide ergonomic safety with a one-size-fits-all approach. They want(ed) to allow for innovation in implementing worker safety programs.

So, the standards have been repealed in favor of guidelines. The ergonomic guidelines set forth by the current leadership in Washington have been made voluntary. There is one law that can be enforced, and that is called "The General Duty Clause". It reads like this:

Each employer --
(1) shall furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees;

(2) shall comply with occupational safety and health standards promulgated under this Act.
(b) Each employee shall comply with occupational safety and health standards and all rules, regulations, and orders issued pursuant to this Act which are applicable to his own actions and conduct.

That's the whole thing! To enforce the General Duty Clause, the employer must be found to have committed a "willful violation" of the clause. A violation can cost an employer between $5,000 and $70,000.

The government now has a "four-pronged comprehensive approach". At their website:
http://www.osha-slc.gov/SLTC/ergonomics/
you can find the Guidelines, the Enforcement Plan (and General Duty Clause), a write-up on the National Advisory Committee on Ergonomics, and information and E-tools designed to reach out to businesses.

For your research needs, here is a primer on hierarchy. The Department of Labor houses 1) the Bureau of Labor Statistics, where you can find numbers on how many and what kind of work related injuries there have been 2) OSHA, which stands for Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA's website has Ergonomics as a topic (see the link above).

You may also wish to look at: http://www.oshaslc.gov/SLTC/ergonomics/guidelines_protocol.html
which gives OSHA's protocol for Developing Industry and Task Specific Ergonomic Guidelines.

For an organization that is there to inform and support the individual worker, turn to the AFL-CIO:
http://www.aflcio.org/yourjobeconomy/safety/ergo/

Lastly, the National Coalition on Ergonomics:
http://www.ncergo.org/
is a group of employers who are probably really glad that the ergonomic standards were rolled back in favor of guidelines. Now they don't have to provide their employees with expensive work gear!