It took OSHA ten years to develop ergonomics requirements for industry — and two days for Congress to kill them. After an uproarious debate, the House (on March 6th) and Senate (on March 7th) voted largely along party lines to scrap the rules, which would have covered 102 million workers at 6.1 million work sites.
It was a classic labor-management brawl. “The voices of injured workers were not heard in the halls of Congress. They were drowned out by the predatory demands of corporate greed," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.