WASHINGTON -- Food industry associations lent their voice and lobbying muscle to a broad coalition of U.S. business groups that oppose the new job-related injury regulations released last week by the Clinton administration.
Food Marketing Institute and Food Distributors International here were expected late last week to join with other business associations to file a lawsuit in federal court to block the implementation of the regulations.
Release of the ergonomics standards added another contentious element to the already partisan-charged atmosphere in Washington. The regulations, which opponents say aren't needed and will be costly to follow, are sure to anger the Republican majority in the 106th Congress who last month unsuccessfully tried to block the rules.
The new job-injury regulations designed to address over-exertion and repetitive motion health hazards would go into effect in January but businesses would have until October to come into compliance.
Business officials in the legal challenge argue the Clinton administration has violated federal rule-making procedures in its rush to have the standards take effect before the president leaves office Jan. 20.
Tim Hammonds, FMI's president, said the coalition hopes to secure a court injunction delaying the implementation of the regulations until after the inauguration. Ultimately, the group wants the court to throw out the regulations.
"What we're trying to do is slow down the railroad here and have a new administration reconsider this," according to Hammonds, who said the supermarket industry is well aware of the need for ergonomic programs and is making progress in the area at a faster rate than the OSHA standards would.
"Our industry would be impacted certainly as much as any industry in America. What they have done here is create a bureaucratic nightmare that diverts the attention of what's now being devoted to workplace safety to satisfying bureaucrats," Hammonds said.
The ergonomics standards would cover an estimated 6 million workplaces. OSHA estimates there are about 600,000 ergonomic injuries a year and the regulations would cut this in half within a decade.
The standards require employers to instruct workers about ergonomic injuries. However, OSHA doesn't get involved until a worker files a workmen's compensation claim citing an ergonomic injury. An employer then must take steps to change a work station, an employee's schedule or otherwise alter the environment under which the injury occurred, according to OSHA standards. Injured workers would be able to take time off with pay to recuperate.
Businesses argue the steps employers would have to take under the standards are overly prescriptive and could cost them between $18 billion to $125.6 billion a year. However, OSHA estimates the cost to business will be $4.5 billion annually but will end up saving companies $9.1 billion by a reduction in disabilities and lost productivity.
Kevin Burke, FDI vice president for government relations, said OSHA is drastically underestimating the regulations' costs. He said an FDI study found that the rules' cost to food distributors alone could reach $26 billion in the first year and $6 billion a year after that.
The OSHA regulations don't "represent careful and comprehensive thought processes and could seriously harm the U.S. economy," Burke said in a statement.
Douglas Dority, international president for the United Food and Commercial Workers' Union, said the food retailing industry has nothing to fear from the new standards since the industry already has vigorous ergonomics programs. However, he said "workers in other plants and industries, like poultry, have been left behind and are hurting from the repetitive motions they perform thousands of times a day."
However, Morrison Cain, vice president of legal and public affairs at the International Mass Retail Association, said the regulations could spell abuse. "Part of the problem is that under these standards you don't have to prove an injury is work-related. You just have to prove it might have been aggravated on the job," said Cain, arguing that an employer shouldn't have to pay for treatment of an off-the-job injury.
Cain called the regulations "a virtual regulatory perpetual motion machine" in which a company can never escape OSHA scrutiny after the first ergonomics complaint has been filed.
Many business lobbyists are hoping George W. Bush will be elected president because his platform opposes the regulations. However, he won't be able to undo Clinton's standards unless he follows strict federal regulation-making rules that take time. For his part, Al Gore would leave the standards alone since his platform was pro-ergonomic regulations.
The new Congress could seek to revoke the ergonomic regulations by using the never-used Congressional Review Act. But because the GOP is holding onto incredibly thin majorities -- a final count of key Senate races could leave the chamber in a 50-50 split -- such a move might be difficult.
