By Helen Dewar and Cindy Skrzycki Washington Post Staff Writers Wednesday, March 7, 2001; Page A1
The Senate voted yesterday to kill a far-reaching Clinton administration rule aimed at preventing workplace injuries. The Bush administration joined congressional Republicans in their first joint assault on a major legacy of President Bill Clinton.
Voting 56 to 44, the Senate approved a proposal to scuttle the ergonomics rule, which could force employers to redesign workplaces and compensate workers for repetitive-motion injuries. The proposal now goes to the House, where Republican leaders plan a vote later this week and predict the measure will be approved.
Six Democrats, mostly moderates from conservative states, broke party ranks to join all 50 Republicans in voting to overturn the workplace rule. Both Virginia senators voted to kill the rule; Maryland's two senators voted to keep it.
The Senate vote was a major victory for business groups, which argued that the rule was unworkable and that compliance costs could reach $100 billion. For organized labor, which supported the rule as the broadest workplace reform ever ordered by the federal government, it was a big setback.
It was also a big win for Senate Republicans in their first major confrontation with Democrats in the new Senate, which is divided 50-50 between the two parties. Democrats contended that the GOP effort, sprung quietly last week, amounted to a stealth attack on a 10-year effort to protect workers from painful, disabling injuries.
During an often heated day-long debate, the regulation was assailed as "over-broad, unworkable and vague" by Republicans, while Democrats characterized the move to repeal it as "anti-worker, anti-woman and anti-family" and a "payoff" to business for its support of the GOP in last year's election.
The White House declared its support for the Republican move, warning that the Clinton regulation "would cost employers, large and small, billions of dollars annually while providing uncertain new benefits."
Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao pledged other action to combat ergonomic injuries, which an estimated 1.8 million American workers suffer from. She said she will seek a more "comprehensive approach to ergonomics, which may include new rulemaking" that will "provide employers with achievable measures that protect their employees before injuries occur." Several Republicans said they would welcome a new rulemaking effort.
But Democrats warned that it will be virtually impossible to come up with effective regulations under terms of an obscure congressional review process that Republicans used to scuttle the Clinton rule.
Business leaders hailed the vote. "The Senate has done the right thing in terms of reining in an agency [that] has gone beyond the original intent of Congress," said Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Labor groups condemned it. " 'Dishonest' and 'disgraceful' are not strong enough words to describe the Senate vote against injured workers," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said.
The ergonomics regulation, which was issued last November and would have taken effect in October, would have covered 102 million workers at more than 6 million work sites, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA estimated the compliance cost at $4.5 billion, far less than many business groups.
The rule would have required employers to provide workers with information about possible injuries and risk factors, review complaints, redesign workplaces if they were found to cause problems, ensure access to medical care, and provide compensation for disabilities. In some cases, employers would have had to pay disabled workers more, and for longer periods of time, than would be the case under state workers' compensation laws.
To kill the rule, Republicans employed a largely ignored law, passed in 1996, that gives Congress a swift way to overturn federal regulations it opposes. The Congressional Review Act, never used until now to overturn a major regulation, provides for action without hearings, committee approval or amendments and limits debate to 10 hours. The law also bars issuance of any new rule that is "substantially" the same as a revoked rule -- language that Democrats said precludes any meaningful action on ergonomics.
"It is an atom bomb for the ergonomics rule," complained Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), ranking Democrat on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Sen. James M. Jeffords (R-Vt.), the committee's chairman, disagreed and said he did not believe that OSHA would be barred from issuing "a more reasonable and workable ergo standard" and urged it to do so.
The vote followed a frenzied lobbying campaign by business and labor.
The National Association of Manufacturers fired up its Member Involvement Network, asking members to contact 13 Senate offices and send each one 25 faxes or make 25 calls.
Businesses papered Capitol Hill with estimates of how much it would cost to comply with the rule. The American Trucking Associations said it would cost Con-Way Transportation Services, to cite one employer, $54 million in the first year to comply. A member of the Food Distributors International, a trade group that represents food wholesalers to grocery stores and restaurants, tallied up what changes would cost at his workplace: $52 million.
Labor organizations put a different face on the cost issue. They highlighted in lobbying and in news conferences with Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Barbara Boxer (Calif.) and Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) the wear and tear on workers from ergonomic-related injuries -- especially women.
A dozen workers with back problems and other ergonomic injuries were brought to Capitol Hill by the AFL-CIO to tell their stories to reporters and to lobby senators' offices. In two days, union members sent more than 15,000 letters, faxes and e-mails to members of Congress.
The six Democrats who voted to kill the regulation were Max Baucus (Mont.), John Breaux (La.), Ernest F. Hollings (S.C.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Blanche L. Lincoln (Ark.) and Zell Miller (Ga.).
© 2001 The Washington Post Company