Ergonomics Taking On New Urgency

The safest place in the area last week was the Spokane Convention Center.

For two days some 2,000 people attending the Governor’s Industrial Safety and Health Conference heard about safety issues on a wide range of topics — from handling methamphetamine wastes, to handling grief in the workplace, to keeping the Dilbert generation productive with “cubicle yoga.”

Among the hotter topics: Washington’s controversial new ergonomics law and the growing need to accommodate older workers.

Perhaps the best-read handout was the 34-page Labor and Industries booklet on “The Ergonomics Rule.”

As most employers and many employees are aware “the rule,” adopted May 26 by L&I following a 20-month process, attempts to reduce injuries from activities such as awkward lifting and repetitive motion.

The rule requires employers to analyze their workplace, identifying any “caution zone jobs,” then to educate employees and reduce hazard risks.

The caution zone involves six areas: job tasks with awkward posture, high-hand force, highly-repetitive motion, repeated impact, frequent heavy lifting and high hand-arm vibration. Examples might include lifting 25 pound objects 25 times a shift, bending over a microscope or machine most of the day, or repetitive gripping of objects requiring certain pressure.

Of course, employers wary of more government presence in the workplace might define this whole effort as a caution zone and think too much pressure is applied to them.

So why the new emphasis on workplace ergonomics?

Simply because other efforts to cut workplace injuries have not been effective enough, said Michael Silverstein, a physician and assistant director of WISHA (Washington Industrial Safety and Health Act) Services Division for L&I.

He said more than 50,000 Washington workers suffer debilitating work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs — this is government; everything has an acronym). These injuries, Silverstein said, cost $411 million a year directly in medical treatment and lost wages. Indirect costs, including lost productivity, may top $1 billion a year.

“And the numbers don’t come near to expressing what this is all about,” Silverstein told a few hundred of the conference-goers. “Ergonomics is about people. Each one of the 50,000 claims each year is a lot more than a number.”

He quoted testimony from the hearings in which one worker said because a workplace injury left her with no sensation in her fingers or hands she “couldn’t push a vacuum cleaner any more, rake leaves in the yard or even use a regular toothbrush. …I couldn’t even push a cart in the grocery store.” This is not a trivial problem, Silverstein said.

Of course, most employers do not trivialize safety issues or encourage time-loss injuries among workers. Ergonomics, which Silverstein said tries to match the capabilities and limitations of the human body to the workplace, has been an area of varying emphasis for decades.

The new Washington rule just takes it to the next level.

The regulations will be phased in over the next five years. Voluntary and demonstration projects are getting under way now. In July of 2002, compliance is required for businesses with 50 or more employees in 12 SIC (Standard Industry Codes) where these “soft-tissue” injuries are more common.

The first wave includes a number of construction trades, trucking, the grocery industry and nursing homes.

Indeed, Silverstein said a group of eight nursing homes that adopted a no-lifting (of patients and objects) or low-lift program experienced a 40 percent reduction in staff time-loss claims in just one year.

All employers, large and small, must join the effort by July 2005. Those with no caution-zone jobs have no compliance requirements, other than to conduct annual reviews.

Silverstein said that while “the rule” as now written does not cover workplace activities such as pushing, pulling and carrying, “we’re hoping you (employers) go beyond the minimum required.”

Questions still remain, as evidenced at the conference.

“Can an employer have a reasonable expectation that an employee be physically fit for the job?” one attendee asked. “Just hiring very strong people doesn’t protect you,” Silverstein replied.

“What’s economically feasible?” asked a second person, as in requiring employers to “reduce all WMSD hazards below the criteria of the law…or to the degree technologically and economically feasible.”

Silverstein said most solutions actually are simple and cheap, such as adding a clamp to a workbench, rather than having a worker use his knee and hand to hold an object he is drilling. The rule’s intent, he said, is “not to put an employer out of business or cause economic harm.”

Hopefully, the rule’s result will be a team effort among employers, workers and regulators to make a big dent in reducing the 50,000 serious injuries a year — without causing business more pain than necessary.

Worker safety is just one issue involved with accommodating the rapidly growing numbers of older workers, said Bruce Douglas, a senior medical consultant with Marsh Risk Consulting in Chicago.

“There just aren’t enough capable people to do most of the jobs that have to be done in a prospering society, so older workers must be hired or kept on the job,” said Douglas, a retired oral surgeon who at 75 works full time for the insurance industry giant.

The problem is worldwide, Douglas said, adding that labor shortages are even worse in Japan, England, Italy and the Scandinavian countries.

In Washington, he said, aging work forces are an issue at Boeing and even at Microsoft, “where most people think they don’t have any older workers.”

“Getting older is not all that simple,” Douglas said. Most older people (50 and beyond) in the workplace, he said, have varying degrees of osteoarthritis, are more likely to use analgesics for pain and may take longer to heal from workplace injuries.

However, Douglas added, those workers also have the experience of wisdom and age, are more loyal to their employer and are far more likely to come to work on time and work longer hours.

Some workplace programs, he said, may help make older and younger workers more productive, including: wellness programs, on-site physical therapy, training for supervisors about ways to use employees, checking for “inter-generational friction” in the work force, ergonomic evaluations and tailoring training programs to fit varying worker abilities.

Satisfaction levels also must rise, Douglas said.

“Many studies indicate that the majority of people don’t like their work. That has to change, so people will want to stay.”