OSHA's medical expert in the case was a university professor who was certified as an expert in ergonomics, who with the assistance of three other faculty members and six residents, had conducted extensive analysis of the medical records of the Dayton Tire employees who allegedly suffered from musculosketetal disorders. This uncertainty is quite alarming coming from a man with expertise in the area. That is what OSHA was relying on in that case. In the 1997, Pepperidge Farm case, OSHA had its only opportunity to have an ergonomics case decided by the full Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. To abate these conditions, OSHA ordered the company to increase its staff, slow assembly line speeds, increase rest periods, or simply automate the entire operation.
Automation means job loss.
People complain that when we automate we are losing jobs. The Commission found that some ergonomic measures had been implemented by the company and that the additional measures proposed by the agency's expert ergonomists were not shown to be feasible and effective. The decision is particularly damaging because OSHA had enlisted enormous resources and leading experts to show what the company should have done to avoid worker injury. Yet OSHA and its experts could not prove in open court what works, again raising the question of how businesses can make such determinations when OSHA can't. In these three cases OSHA deployed hundreds of experts and millions of dollars to target what they considered to be particularly hazardous work sites.