OSHA would ban cookie-lifting

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 10:02:52 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED JUNE 15, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
OSHA would ban cookie-lifting

In what is being called a "defining test of House sentiment on the issue," the House of Representatives voted 220-203 on June 8 to block the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from instituting new proposed "ergonomics" regulations -- rules which would require workplaces throughout the nation to be redesigned on the theory that typing causes carpal tunnel syndrome, and so forth.

Last week's vote split largely on partisan lines, with most Republicans voting to bar OSHA from putting the proposed new rules into effect, while most Democrats want OSHA to go to town.

"Maybe the Republicans would recognize ergonomics injuries if we applied them to tennis and golf," sneered Rep. George Miller, D-Calif.

President Clinton could still veto the "cease and desist" order. But to do so the president would have to reject the entire $339.5 billion health, education, and welfare spending bill to which it is attached.

The Labor Department estimates 1.8 million workers each year suffer injuries related to overexertion or repetitive motion -- and that a third of those are injured seriously enough to be forced to take time off from work.

The proposed federal rules would cover an estimated 27 million workers.

Advocates argue the government needs to take a larger role in preventing repetitive-motion injuries, "ailments that force thousands of American workers off the job with aching muscles, tendons and joints."

And as was the case when the workplace police were lobbying for the Americans with Disabilities Act a few years back, administration officials insist many of the proposed fixes -- "some as simple as adjusting the height of a desk or a chair" -- would be quick and cheap.

Business owners reply the regulations could cost employers uncounted billions while giving government too much power to meddle in key business decisions.

Fortunately, OSHA has already brought some court cases which provide concrete examples against which to measure these conflicting claims.

In the Beverly Enterprise case, OSHA sought to prevent nursing home employees from lifting patients. "Despite a month-long trial and a parade of OSHA experts, a judge found that 'There is no reliable epidemiological evidence establishing lifting as a cause of [lower back pain]' and that 'Science has not been successful in showing when and under what circumstances lifting presents significant risks of harm,' " writes Eugene Scalia, a labor and employment attorney in Washington D.C. and author of the Cato Institute policy analysis "OSHA's Ergonomics Litigation Record: Three Strikes and It's Out."

Seeking to correlate repetitive motion with injuries in a 1992 study of a major telecommunications firm, the government actually found complaints went down among workers who worked more overtime. "In other words, more repetitive motion meant fewer complaints," attorney Scalia reports.

In a 1998 decision in the Dayton Tire case, a judge found OSHA's expert witnesses failed to account for other possible causes of workers' reported ailments, such as sports. "The judge deemed OSHA's methods 'junk science' by the standards established in the Supreme Court's 1993 Daubert decision, and also found repeated inconsistencies among OSHA's own witnesses: Each of OSHA's supposed experts had a different theory about what made a job dangerous and what would fix it," Scalia reports.

OSHA looked even sillier in the 1997 Pepperidge Farm case. In that case, Mr. Scalia writes, "OSHA alleged that workers faced 'death or serious physical harm' from lifting the top of a sandwich cookie from one assembly line and placing it on the bottom of the cookie on another assembly line. OSHA also said it was dangerous to use one's thumb to flick a paper cup onto a conveyor belt and then place a cookie in the cup. It ordered the company to increase staffing, slow assembly line speeds, increase rest periods or simply automate the entire operation."

(Paging Alexis Herman; paging John Sweeney -- Mr. Sweeney, please pick up Line 1.)

"But at trial OSHA could not demonstrate that any of those measures was a feasible and effective means of reducing musculoskeletal disorders at the worksite."

Now, "instead of backing down after those embarrassing losses, OSHA wants to entrench the questionable science of ergonomics as a permanent rule," Mr. Scalia concludes. "But no agency should be permitted to impose on the entire American economy a costly rule premised on 'science' so mysterious that the agency itself cannot fathom it."

"When OSHA says 'Trust us, we'll enforce it reasonably,' -- well, we don't trust them," agrees Randel Johnson, a vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Come now, boys, haven't you learned by now? They're from the government ... and they're here to help.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at $24.95 postpaid by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

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Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

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-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair