Most of your will recall that, in the final days of the Clinton administration, OSHA enacted a new Ergonomics Standard. This massive standard was quickly repealed by the Congress in 2001. The way the law is written, the repeal of an agency regulation also bars that agency from issuing a similar rule in the future. Because the repealed Standard was so broad and comprehensive, it has been thought that it would be difficult for OSHA to pass a new Ergonomics standard. This hasn’t stopped OSHA’s enforcement on ergonomics, and OSHA recently reported that the agency has issued 19 “General Duty Clause” citations for ergonomics since 2002.

Now, under the Obama administration, OSHA Ergonomics is getting another look… At a recent ASSE conference, interim OSHA administrator Jordan Barab said ergonomics was “the 60,000-pound elephant in the room.” He acknowledged the prohibition on a new ergonomics standard, but said, when it comes to ergonomics, “we can fix this.” Further…

 

“The new OSHA chief David Michaels has set his sights on writing a workplace ergonomics standard to replace the one rejected in 2000 as overly broad and ill-defined.
In his overall approach, Michaels is in favor of increased regulation and oversight, but his stated desire to tackle the challenge of ergonomics already has the business community circling the wagons in self-defense. Business leaders see ergonomics as a costly quagmire, and they were successful in 2000 at getting an ergonomics standard rescinded for that very reason.”

 

More on this as the story develops…

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