Dan Smith is managing editor of the Journal. When the U.S. Congress negated the Clinton Administration's late-term imposition of OSHA ergonomics standards a couple of weeks ago, the result was predictable. Meanwhile, what we get is no protection and no guidelines for those workers at risk and those businesses willing to attempt to protect them. But Bill Mercer, director of services at Professional Therapies of Roanoke, isn't especially concerned. If, for example, you show up with rotator cuff syndrome, sciatica, Raynaud's phenomenon, De Quervain's disease, epicondylitis, herniated spinal disc or several other maladies, you're on your own.
Mercer works daily with businesses looking for solutions, at their own expense.
The OSHA regulations furnished some guidelines, albeit excessive and overbearing in some cases and expensive in most cases. The actual cost is almost certainly somewhere between those extremes, as it usually is when government and business squabble over policy. OSHA has been studying ergonomics for 20 years and in 1997, it stepped up its interest, issuing 12-pages of guidelines. The Clinton Administration last year pushed for regulations that would bypass Congress, which had been loath to impose them. It got the OSHA regs and Dubya's Congress, as one of its first official acts, rolled those back.