The rule that was repealed--an ergonomics regulation issued last November by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under then-president William Clinton--would have covered about 100 million workers at 6 million workplaces.

The measure, originally slated to take effect in October 2001, 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. It also had provisions that in some cases would have forced employers to pay disabled workers higher payments for a longer period than is required by state workers' compensation laws.

The vote in both the House and Senate was largely along party lines, with all Republicans and six Democrats voting for repeal in the Senate, and a 223-206 vote in the House in which 16 Democrats and all but 13 Republicans backed the repeal.

The AFL-CIO issued a statement condemning the vote.

Business leaders from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, American Trucking Associations, Food Distributors International, and other groups applauded the repeal. They asserted that the rule would have put compliance costs as high as $100 billion.

Labor organizations had been actively lobbying against the bill. When Vice President Richard Cheney met with 1,700 members of the National Association of Manufacturers in Washington the week before the vote, a group of 200 union members and others held a sidewalk demonstration outside the meeting.

Labor Secretary Elaine Chao said she will seek a more "comprehensive approach to ergonomics, which may include new rulemaking" to "provide employers with achievable measures that protect their employees before injuries occur."

Some 1.6 million repetitive stress injuries are reported every year, and 600,000 cause workers to miss time on the job. These figures represent only what is reported, and it is likely that company intimidation results in hundreds of thousands of cases going unreported and untreated.

The U.S. Labor Department, basing its data on employers' reports, published data showing that workplace injuries and illnesses declined 4 percent from 1998 to 1999. The same report shows a steady increase since 1986 of "cases with days of restricted work activity only." Many companies pressure injured workers to report for "restricted" or "light" duty.

One notorious case of company attempts to intimidate workers and downplay the brutal reality of working conditions was the initiation by the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Corp. (BNSF) of secret genetic testing of some railroad workers to try to prove "genetic predisposition" to carpal-tunnel syndrome.

Carpal-tunnel syndrome is a painful and often permanently crippling disorder of the hands and wrists caused by repetitive motion. The repetitive motion causes swelling of the tendons in the wrist, which in turn puts pressure on and can damage the nerves that are bundled with the tendons in the same "tunnel."

After unionists filed two lawsuits, the railroad bosses had to back down, and announced February 12 they would stop the tests. In a March 1 letter BNSF's president and chief executive officer, Matt Rose, apologized to employees for the testing.

The Labor Department classifies carpal tunnel syndrome and noise-induced hearing loss as illnesses. There were 372,000 newly reported cases of occupational illnesses in 1999, 60 percent of them in manufacturing. Carpal-tunnel syndrome and noise-induced hearing loss accounted for 245,000 of the 372,000 total "illness" cases reported.

A number of recent labor struggles have centered on demands for improved health and safety conditions. Workers at Dakota Premium Foods in St. Paul, Minnesota, conducted a seven-hour sit-down strike last year to protest the speed of the production line and a rising injury rate. Out of this strike the workers won some concessions on line speed and went on to vote for union representation by the United Food and Commercial Workers union.

Meat packers at the Excel beef cut-and-kill plant in Fort Morgan, Colorado, carried out a strike February 26 to protest job conditions that are injuring many workers. One of the strike leaders, Adan Morales, 28, has had wrist surgery and lost movement in his hands. "We cannot continue to work under the conditions we now have," he said.

More than 1,600 members of the International Association of Machinists struck Frigidaire in St. Cloud, Minnesota, last year, raising objections over the increase of the line speed from 550 units per shift to 1,300 units per shift over a three-year period. Their new contract provides for two full-time union officers in the plant, one to handle safety concerns and another to deal with issues such as production speed.  
 
 
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