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OSHA Getting Tougher About Ergonomics
Pfhreakaz0id writes "Looks like the U.S. government is starting to (seriously) look at workplace injuires. See the story at CNN. Labor Secretary Alexis Herman
says, 'Real people are suffering real injuries that can disable their bodies and destroy their lives.' Amen.
Under the rules, a worker who has an ergonomic injury diagnosed by a doctor would be entitled to have the work environment fixed to relieve the cause -- by changing the height of an assembly line or computer keyboard, for example.
"
- Under ADA, my organization was required to arrange for a 35" TV to be attached to a PC running in 640x480 mode so that he could use the PC (granted, this wasn't due to work-related injuries).
- Someone I work with has carpal-tunnel syndrome so bad (this is a work-related injury) that our organization was required to arrange for voice-recognition SW & headset for her -- the good side is she can now prepare documents far, far faster than anyone else can.
This move is clearly intended to prevent work-related injuries from getting so bad that ADA kicks in.Christopher A. Bohn
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
The point is NOT to penalize the employers but to get them to change the environment. Currently many employers figure that they don't have to worry about changing the environment because they feel that they can always hire someone else more desperate than the previous employee to do the same job. This is one of those cases where self-regulation either is not being applied or hasn't worked. When your company can't regulate itself - you can sure bet that someone from the outside will regulate it for you. As for physically unfit employees I feel the same way you do. If the injury is because of bad fitness then yes, the employer should be able to say "get healthy" and not pay a dime. Sounds cruel but it's how is needs to be done. We clamor about how people are taking responsibility out of our hands but we don't do anything to take charge of our own situations. And in case someone wants to say "sure he's probably healthy" I'm 5 feet 8 inches and weigh 240 lbs with a 200 count of cholesterol. Do I have health problems - yes. Do I let them interfere with my job - no.
"Bah!" - Dogbert
A good friend of mine designs workstations for large companies and can see that this is not going to do anyone much good. They've been spending a ton of money on this already, throwing out pefectly good funiture for new more "ergonomic" stuff. Mostly, it's been going to overwheight whiners who would be better off if they simply exercised and tried to keep healthy. A thousand dollar chair won't solve their problems. Data entry people and others who could really benifit won't.
On the blue colar front, the low threshold will waste more than it fixes. As a former RPS PM loader, I can assure everyone that manual labor will wear you out regardless of back protectors, converyor belts, bells, whistles, or a federally mandated desk jockey! No amount of coaching can prevent accidents, and people who lift 50lb boxes all day will eventually suffer back problems.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The reason for this is the legal principle that employers should not have a workplace that causes injury to the employees if the injuries can be easily prevented. Since the damage is already done by the time symptoms appear with many cases of CTS, regulations to prevent these injuries from happening in the workplace make a lot of sense. For many typists not in the IT industry (like secretaries), the "take this job and shove it" approach can be a disaster if the job market in your area is not exactly thriving. I don't think it is too much to ask for employers to purchase ergonomic workstations and I/O equipment.
As an analog to this situation think about a coal miner in Nowhere, WV, where the job market is in the toilet. If the only jobs avail. are in coal mines, do you think it is right for a mining company to negelect basic safety measures simply because the employees are free to quit if they think they have an unacceptable likelihood of dying? Yes, you won't die from typing too much, but you can suffer crippling injuries that are not too expensive to prevent.
I think that these regulations are targetted at 2 sorts of workplaces - large ones where there is a known history of RSI-related problems (like the aforementioned poultry place) - these will have to make proactive changes to protect their employees - just like say a coal mine where people suffer from black lung disease would be required to provide clean air.
The second are small places where individuals come down with particular problems - for example if I come down with tendonitis (as I have for the past 10 years) because I'm a programmer then my employer will be required to take reasonable steps to protect me from health problems resulting from me performing my job - in my case a chair that comes to the right height and a trackball instead of a mouse seems to do the trick.
I think that one of the more general problems with RSIs is that they've only recently been recognised as something real - primarily because a bunch of white collar workers like me started coming down with them - before that induestry quietly burned through the chicken workers of the world without a big stink being raised
Either way, they win. Why do you think companies insist on using Windows?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
From the first sentence of the article...
Employers would have to correct injury-causing workplace conditions...
Sounds good to me. Perhaps you disagree - perhaps employers should NOT have to correct "injury-causing workplace conditions"? This has nothing to do with employees who are unfit and everything to do with keeping employees safe.
Why in the world would you want to continue a job as a typist when you have CTS?
Because you can't afford any time between jobs. Because you have bills you need to pay. Because you have kids to feed. If you'd ever been in this situation, you'd understand. If you never have, then consider yourself lucky. Not everyone can afford to find a new job. Not everyone has the requisite skills for finding a better job. And no employer should be permitted to cause injury to epmloyees through negligence.
This is not just about typists, you know. A friend of mine worked in tech support for a major OEM (think spots). She developed carpal tunnel syndrome. Although the IS department had a number of "ergonomic" keyboards and mice in stock, the management wouldn't authorize their use. I was told that if they let some people have them, then everyone would want them. She was in pain whenever she had to type. I should point out that this didn't happen until a year after she had started working there. It is not unreasonable to believe that her work has a contributing factor to her injury.
I have no problem with saying that if a potential employee can't do the job, for whatever reason, then an employer shouldn't have to change the job description to suit the employee. But if workplace conditions have been demonstrated to cause injury, then I am definitely in favor of requiring the employer to make changes.
A lot of people posting here seem (despite misgivings about the specifics) to agree with the general thrust of the ADA / OSHA moves toward micro-regualtion of work environments.
... has anyone tried a Twiddler keyboard? There's a learning curve (I'm no expert, but I like it) -- bureacratic rule-making tends to ignore things like this.
..."
I feel just the opposite, and here's why: by specifying "better" workplaces (certain fixed measurements / ratios or ranges of ratios / measurements for particular situations, say, or specifying the "correct" tilt of a keyboard)
the government wraps a tourniquet about the leg of new ideas. (To forge an awful metaphor.) They also considerably raise the cost of entry to start-ups.
There are a lot of ergonomically awful products in the world -- keyboards that feel awful, chairs that suck. Why do they sell? Because in the short term, they often offer an acceptable solution, at least in light of the cost of other available solutions. I'm told that Hermann Miller Aeron chairs are very comfy; I'm promised one soon. The reason that not everyone is presently sitting in an Aeron is pretty simple - look at the pricetag!
And as others have pointed out, no amount of tables, graphs and statistics can account for the subtle things which make some people comfortable with desk Y and keyboard Z, and others not.
There's less incentive to work on radically *more* comfortable products if there is an accepted "Good Enough to Avoid Prosecution" level
Government rule makers often do co-opt some good ideas (think the NHSTB invented the 3-point belt? Thank Volvo they didn't.), but there is a calcification which results when standards are legislated rather than allowed to bloom or die.
Some people counter this argument by saying that "We can't make compromises when it comes to safety!" Balderdash. I bet in 5 minutes you could think of a dozen examples where you've done exactly that, and with justification -- because a) perfect safety is an illusion and b) safety is just one of many factors acting on us. Have you ever gone 74 in a 70mph zone? Have you ever not worn a seatbelt on the way to the corner store? Have you ever biked without a helmet? Have you ever attended a concert without earplugs?
I don't like the term "safety Nazi" because I think it belittles the evil the Nazis perpetrated, but it would be accurate to call those who have been so labeled "safety fascists," because that is essentially is what fascism is all about: there is nominal private ownership of resources, but the disposition of those resources is in large part directed from above. "Sure, you own this small business. But unless you buy new (expensive) light fixtures, replace your old-style doorknobs with (more expensive) new-style ones, and install an elevator to the third floor for (potentially) diabled employees, afraid you can't run it without facing prosecution and possible fines. Oh, and by the way, you're guilty. Please direct all complaints to
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
It's probably because you don't touch-type properly. Proper touch-typing keeps the wrists rather still, and involves a lot of flexing of the fingers, whereas the half-assed touch-typing that most people do involves more hand movement and less finger movement. Everyone I know who types as much as me who doesn't touch-type has little to no wrist problems, whereas I've touch-typed properly since I was 8 (I was bored and had a C64) and so I've had various carpal tunnel problems on and off for the last few years. My solution to it is to use programs like xwrits to force myself to not type for very long periods of time and to occasionally switch between various keyboards (a cheapo MS Natural clone, a DataHand, and a few others) and try to vary my typing style. For example, right now I'm typing with the cheapo Natural clone and using a semi-lackluster touchtyping style, though I've kinda been spoiled by the Datahand's keyboard layout, but I'm doing a pretty good job of letting my hands do most of the work rather than my fingers.
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Yes, I know RSI is a real problem, and I agree that employers should be sufficiently responsible about the workplace environment so that the chances are minimized that any employee will suffer injuries of that nature.
That said, I have a big problem with OSHA sticking their nose into this. The business of OSHA is to (if you feel they are a legitimate governmental authority - I have a philosophical opposition to their existence) prevent workers from getting maimed and killed. OSHA is for the construction sites, the meat-packing plants, and the assembly lines of the nation (places where workers are at significant risk of bodily harm), not the white-collar offices. Existing workers' compensation law should be more than sufficient to allow the free market to deal with RSI - if the employer does not make fairly inexpensive adjustments for the benefit of their employees, there will be more workers' comp claims and higher turnover, resulting in higher costs to the employer (insurance, legal, and training costs). It is to the economic advantage of the employer to provide a reasonable environment to their employees. If I'm productive at my task, my employer will make sure I'm properly equipped to do my job in reasonable comfort - if I'm not, they'll fire my butt. My company, as an example, is happy to provide trackballs, ergo keyboards, keyboard trays, and adjustable chairs to try to make the workplace as comfortable as we can for our employees. But we haven't worried about measurements to specific OSHA-inlicted guidelines or any of that crap - we do it because comfortable employees are happier and get more done as a result. It just makes sense.
The problem as I see it is that OSHA, like any governmental bureaucracy, has an institutional need to impose (without legislative mandate) more and more rules on the workplace in order to demonstrate their (OSHA's) effectiveness and justify their continued existence. Simply monitoring and enforcing a minimum of rules doesn't justify bigger budgets and pay raises for the people who work there and OSHA's constituencies on the Hill. This applies to virtually all the commissions and agencies (like the EPA, EEOC, and OSHA, to name the most egregious offenders) that exist outside the traditional Cabinet-level structure and most of the ones that are in it, too. It's just an ever-expanding mandate - will they regulate your home office - or Rob's, or Hemos' house once it's rebuilt as their next action "for your safety"?
This most recent Congress has been, by most conventional measures, a spectacularly inefficient one - nothing of any substance has been passed due to the partisan gridlock that's prevailed ever since the Clinton investigation kicked into high gear. And you know what? It's been successful as all hell. It appears that the nation does just fine without Congress passing laws - somehow we're just able to get over it, pick ourselves up, and continue building this economy to unheard-of heights. Coincidence? I doubt it. I'm a firm believer in the general philosophy of "that government governs best which governs least".
Hey - my cat wants to sit on my lap while I'm typing this - does this have OSHA implications?
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."