Now the nation knows what safety and health pros have known for years — OSHA’s plans for an ergonomics rule is a white-hot controversy, divisive enough to send Congress home for a cooling-off period after Democrats and Republicans failed to reach a compromise that would allow the agency to publish final requirements.
Seldom does a job safety issue take center stage in Washington like the ergo rule did just days before the national election. Congress’s failure to compromise on ergo standards-setting killed a tentative accord on a $144-billion funding bill for health, education and labor. Early Monday morning (Oct. 30), negotiators for Democrats and Republicans added a “rider” to the budget bill that prohibited OSHA from enforcing an ergo standard until June 1, 2001 — but the wording did not explicitly restrict OSHA from issuing the standard.