OSHA Announces Final Ergonomics Program Standard

Desdinova77 writes "OSHA has announced rules for proper ergonomics to prevent RSI type injuries On their site (I had trouble gtting to this site but it is the 'official' link on the OSHA site. There is also a story about it on Yahoo " Is this going to have an affect on any of your offices? I doubt my broken couch meets the specs.

Comments

Re:I didn't make noise and I got burned... at 16.

[Seumas]

That reminds me of one of my first jobs when I was about high-school age.

I was working for a temp agency who basically stuck me in job after job where my purpose was to sit at whatever flat surface they had in whatever crammed but available spot in their building that they could spare, punching in 10-key as fast as possible, duplicating data from hard-copy files for 9 hours a day until the job was over and I could be assigned to yet another company at yet another crammed but available flat-spot where they could squeeze a monitor and keyboard and stack of hard-copy.

I finally quit one day and told them that if I was going to destroy my hands, wrists and forearms, it was going to be for something a little more brain-grabbing and interesting than punching in social security numbers.
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seumas.com

Re:Just what the US needs, more laws

[Seumas]

I hate unnecessary government regulation as much as anyone. I think that OSHA attacks issues that are very important and should be addressed by companies, but I think that it should be less of a 'government regulation' and more of a "if you don't take care of your employers, we're going to stick it to you" from the insurance company. At least that keeps the government further from it and provides incentive for the employer to take care of their employees (who are, after all, hurting themselves all for the benefit of their employer).

Anyone who is old enough to remember the days prior to OSHA will probably admit that it is better than not having OSHA, though. There was a day when a handful of deaths were expected in a lot of jobs. People who built some of our biggest dams swung from cranes a couple hundred feet over the earth without any tethers and operated dangerous machinery without any protection at all. What are a few lives compared to meeting a deadline?! A company can always hire more people -- but you can only meet a deadline once.

OSHA seems to help in some way to strike a balance wherein someone finally tells employers that they can't neglect their employes simply because addressing the problems directly gained from their daily job will cost a few bucks.

Don't misunderstand me though -- I'm not an OSHA fan, either. I'm just saying that some sort of regulation is obviously needed, because before OSHA, we didn't have ergo-anything and if you couldn't perform your job anymore because you were hurting from your job, you better hope you have a lot of sick-days saved, because as far as your boss was concerned, you were slacking off if you weren't punching the clock.
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seumas.com

Re:Just what the US needs, more laws

[fhwang]

Actually, the U.S.'s predominance in the computer field is in large part due to government assistance. For one thing, the U.S. armed forces has been one of the most significant organizations in terms of investing in technology research -- remember that ENIAC was originally designed to help the Defense Dept. calculate mortar trajectory tables for World War II.

And the Internet itself was originally built on a number of networks created and maintained by either the military, or publically funded academic & research organizations. Remember Compuserve? Remember the days of the pre-internet AOL? That's all the network that the private sector could create on its own. The public sector invested in the networks first, and after they did the hard work, private companies jumped in to fill the void in the commercial market.

Without public investment, we'd all have shitty e-mail addresses like 95820.4829@compuserve.com. If we had e-mail at all.

Sound vs. Unsound Science

[vergil]

Seems like many members of the Slashdot community (known for their ferocious libertarian streaks) reflexively exhale with resentment at the mention of government regulation.

For the most part, I agree. Government regulation, in my mind, is characterized by bureacratic ineptitude, and is typically intrusive, unnecessary and burdensome.

However, let's put generalities by the wayside and discuss the case at hand based on it's inherent (de)merits. We're not talking about the latest incarnation of the Clipper Chip.

According to the aforementioned article:

Business groups, who have said the rule is based on unsound science, plan to mount a legal challenge.

Sound vs. "unsound" science. Sound familiar? This is a specious hallmark of corporate-funded public relations. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, oil companies, auto manufacturers and other mass polluters denied the existence of global climate change, which was scapegoated as "unsound" science.

Perhaps the business groups have a point that ergonomic reforms may come at a prohibitive cost (then again, business coalitions mumble the same disingenuous mantra when calls go up for any type of change from the status quo -- environmental, social et al).

I'm really interested in seeing exactly how requiring manual laborers to use lumbar-support belts constitutes unsound science.

Sincerely,
Vergil

RSI isn't always a bad thing!

[Grim Metamoderator]

From the kind of code some programmers write, they deserve to have their wrists hurt. One guy I know has been out of work for three years because of RSI, and if you'd ever seen his code, you'd be thankful.

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Just what the US needs, more laws

[Hairy_Potter]

How wonderful, more government intervention.

Listen, there is a reason that the United States, with less government internvention, is a computing powerhouse while countries with stricter government rules (I'm talking Sweden and France and probably other European countries) are lagging in productivity parametrics with respect to the IT industry. United States IT companies are used to working with fewer government constraints, they can respond quicker to industry pressures and are more nimble, thus more successful and productive.

I don't have too much of an issue with OSHA offering guidelines, so that the smarter IT people can by ergonomic equipmenton thier own (I know I will, since my typing skills are my livelihood), but we shouldn't handicap busineeses that can't afford this.

If we do, we may slide down that same slippery slope to Socialism that Europe has descended, and some other country will eat out cheese. Believe me,the coders in India are very smart and very hungry,and would love to be the top IT hot dog on the bock.

Re:Just what the US needs, more laws

[gammoth]

1. There are several reasons why the US is so successful in IT. A relatively free market is but one of them.
2. RSI can be a terribly dibilitating condition. Many members of the workforce don't have the economic clout to successfully lobby their employer to properly manage the work environment.
3. If you proposed to a CEO that they could have some incredible salary package, but only on the condition that in fifteen years they would be unable to lift a their grandchildren or swing a golf club, I guarantee you no CEO would accept. Funny that crappy salary packages and RSI are good enough for staff.
4. Slippery slope arguments are annoying! (And not persuasive.)

At the dawn of the industrial revolution, some factories in England were working children 16 hours a day, 6 days a week. Somehow I don't think a "please stop" ended this practice.

In my observations...

[Seumas]

My observations have been that employers don't extend themselves for ergonomic concerns but will usually offer to work with an employee who makes some noise. Unfortunately, most of us won't make noise because we don't want to seem like plaintiv nuisances.

Most of the people I know sit in whatever two dollar chair they're given at a desk that was never adjusted specifically for them and type on your standard straight-edge qwerty keyboard with standard everything. In other words, they go home aching.

I mean, to a lot of us it is hard to admit that our wrists are hurting. Most of us type in one way or another for a living -- it isn't like we're digging ditches stocking shelves. So we often keep quiet. I usually do, but it sucks when you can't sleep because your wrists are throbbing and you can't grip a coffee mug until you've relaxed for a day or so.

I wonder how this effects users who tellecommute. How can my employer dictate or be held responsible for my work environment at home? Granted, my eight foot banquet table and cheap OfficeMax chair might not be the best health-wise, but I'm not about to go out and spend hundreds of dollars to egonomize my home office.

Besides, a lot of us are overweight, get no excersize, have failing eyesight and live on pizza and soda. How are we going to get an employer to take us seriously when we then complain because our poor little wrists are achey-wakey?

I'm sure I'll regret the attitude of "I'm embarassed to make noise about it to my employer" that I have -- probably someday when I have arthritis and can't grip a pencil or a cup... but oh well.
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seumas.com

This won't affect techies the most

[fhwang]

While engineers and other techies (i.e. the bulk of Slashdot's readership) are at risk for RSI, they also have enough clout in the marketplace to ask for, and get, decent equipment to work on. The people who are genuinely at risk are those who do highly repetitive, low-paying computer- and machine-based work such as data entry, shipping, stocking, etc., etc.. They're engaged in activities that put them at extremely high risk for RSI -- more so, I'd wager, than many techies, since engineering work has many breaks where you take your hands off the keyboard and stop to think. And let's not forget that the people in those kinds of low-skills jobs have almost no clout in the marketplace, and cannot demand ergonomically okay equipment.

So before all the anti-regulation complaints start, please stop and think about it from the point of view of someone who's working one of those jobs. Not only are you doing a menial task for low money and little chance for advancement (much less human engagement), without OSHA you'd face the possibility of losing the use of your hands sometime in the next few years. You'd probably be grateful for the government intervention, too.

Re:Proof?

[Seumas]

I've spent half of my life heavily involved in sports -- wrestling, judo, swimming, boxing, soccer, etc. I've spent most of my childhood doing heavy work around the house and helping build houses with my grandfather (a carpenter).

Let me just say that out of all the injuries I've ever had, including when I was hit by a car a couple years ago and thrown fifty feet through the air into the asphalt, the pain in your forearms and wrists after spending 12 or 18 hours at the keyboard every day for several days or weeks in a row surpasses them all.

I've resorted, at times, to taking those wraps intended for sprained ankles that you buy at the pharmacy, and wrapping them around my wrist and hand and placing my wrist on a folded hand-towel in front of my mouse pad.

Employers might occasionally deny that repetative tasks in a job can cause pain or permenant damage -- but most employers are not in the medical field, have no medical degree and are not involved in the medical and scientific research that has proven that there are extreme stresses on the human body from repetative motions. Take a plastic stick and bend it to and fro repeatedly and it's going to snap. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that repetative lifting or typing or any of a number of other things can cause problems.

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seumas.com