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OSHA Ergonomics Rule Voted Down In two days of floor debate and votes, the U.S. Senate (March 6) and then the House (March 7) effectively withdrew legislative consent from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's Ergonomics Rule and sent this withdrawal of consent to President Bush for his promised signature. Thus terminated one of the most controversial rulemaking processes in OSHA's history. OSHA issued a draft Ergonomics Rule-purporting to address risk of workplace injuries associated with repetitive motion and heavy lifting-two years ago. Business interests submitted extensive testimony in opposition to the Rule, which OSHA responded to, in its final published version, by making the Rule even more burdensome. The least acceptable new provision was an employee compensation measure in excess of Workers' Comp payments for diagnosed ergonomic injuries, in spite of substantial uncertainty about the influence of workplace conditions over ergonomic disabilities and the obvious incentives for fraud. FRA's main concern was the Rule's potential impact on logging employers, whose businesses were among the second tier of the types of businesses the Rule targeted. This vote makes expensive and drawn-out legal action to overturn the Rule unnecessary and, furthermore, prevents OSHA from taking a "substantially similar" approach in any future attempt to regulate ergonomics. Return to Public Policy Archive Forest Resources Association
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