Statement of Sarah Palmer Amos International Executive Vice President United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW)
U.S. Department of Labor Ergonomics Public Forum, Chicago, Illinois July 20, 2001

Good morning. I am Sarah Amos, International Executive Vice President of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, the UFCW. On behalf of the 1.4 million members of the UFCW, I would like to express our appreciation for the opportunity to address this forum.

I would also like to thank Secretary of Labor Chao for coming to the UFCW headquarters building in Washington, D.C. a few months ago to meet on the ergonomic standard with UFCW President Doug Dority and several UFCW members.

They discussed in graphic terms the human meaning of ergonomic injuries, the crippling pain, the surgery, the disruption of family life, the job and income loss. They also pointed to solutions. At a meatpacking plant in Nebraska, a union-management team reviewed every job and made changes to eliminate ergonomic hazards. Injuries took a nosedive, and so did costs for workers compensation claims and lost productivity. That program came as a direct result of OSHA enforcement action, following charges filed by the UFCW.

The road to enlightenment in the business world often begins with the threat of legal action and punishment. From the UFCW's fight for the elimination of ergonomic hazards in the meatpacking industry came the effort for an OSHA ergonomic standard. More than a decade ago, a UFCW president met with a Bush-appointed Secretary of Labor, Elizabeth Dole, and together they started the work that produced the OSHA ergonomic standard.

Today, we are forced to continue a fight that should have been, and was, finished. We stand here today, as we did more than a decade ago, with no standard and hundreds of thousand of workers needlessly injured and crippled. I said the UFCW appreciated the opportunity to be here and be heard. And we are. But I also want to say on behalf of our 1.4 million members, that we are outraged that we have to be here. We are outraged at the political treachery that killed the ergonomic standard.

The adversaries of the ergonomic standard used a lie, wrapped in a deception, covered with a distortion to condemn more than a half million workers a year to injuries and pain that could have been prevented. The lie is that ergonomic injuries are not real. The deception is the repeated, and absolutely false, claim that the science is not there to support a standard that would help identify and prevent ergonomic injuries. The distortion is that an OSHA standard would cost jobs.

The real culprits in the death of the ergonomic standard are easy to identify, corporate political money and unrestrained corporate greed. They can buy politicians. They can buy scientists. They can buy University professors. Underneath it all is still the lie, the deceit and the distortion?motivated by greed and backed up by an unlimited slush fund.

The reality, however, remains unchanged. And the reality is easy to understand, and, everybody in this room can understand it. Take the job of a de-boner in a poultry plant. Now, pick up a pen or pencil. Hold as a tightly as you can. Now, with a jerking motion, thrust that pen or pencil towards you as if you were cutting something that offered a good deal of resistance. Make that exact same motion 60 times a minute for just an hour. That's just one-eighth of a work day. See what happens to your wrist, your hand, your elbow, your shoulder.

I challenge anybody in this room who doubts the reality of ergonomic injuries, to do what I just described and do it just for the time that this panel testifies. You will never deny reality again. Where are the business mouthpieces in the room? I particularly want to challenge the business mouthpieces. Try to do the job of a de-boner in a poultry plant, and, then tell us that repetitive motion injuries do not exist.

We know they won't accept the challenge. The fact is they would rather lie. It's easier and the pay is better. The UFCW challenged the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to do the jobs of UFCW members for one hour. They would not. They would rather deceive and distort.

Truth is on the side of the ergonomic standard. And NAM and the Chamber don't want any part of the truth. The truth is clear and uncompromising. Workers in packing, processing and poultry plants make the same cuts or make the same motion up to 25,000-30,000 times a day. You cannot do that day in and day out without injuring yourself.

To question whether these injuries happen at work or at home is absurd. As a poultry worker said, "when I get home, I can barely move my hands or arms after working all day on the line. I can't hardly sleep because of the pain, much less do anything else. Then they tell me I got hurt at home." Workers are making tens of thousands of the same cuts or same movements on the job every day, all day. What do you do at home all day, every day that requires the repetition of the same motion tens of thousands of times a day?

Workplace ergonomic hazards are injuring and crippling workers. Job station and work adjustments can prevent these injuries. The science is clear. The National Academy of Science reported:

• A strong evidence showing that exposure to ergonomic hazards in the workplace causes musculoskeletal disorders and that these injuries can be prevented.

• "The panel's review of the research literature. . .and workplace intervention strategies has identified a rich and consistent pattern of evidence that supports a relationship between the workplace and the occurrence of MSDs of the low back and upper extremities."

• ". . .For disorders of the upper extremities, repetition, force and vibration are particularly important work related factors."

• "The weight of the evidence justifies the introduction of appropriate and selected interventions to reduce the risk of musculoskeletal disorders of the low back and upper extremities."

• The use of ergonomic principles to reduce exposure to risk factors reduces the risk of MSDs. Changing the design of tools and workstations, rotating jobs and other ergonomic interventions such as lift tables that reduce ergonomic risk factors have been shown to reduce the risk of MSDs of the low back and upper extremities.

We heard the lie that food workers would be restricted to lifting a 14 pound turkey under the standard. The standard, in fact, gave workers and employers the flexibility to find solutions that fit their workplaces. That's what works. We know because we have comprehensive ergonomic programs. They reduce injuries and surgeries, and generate savings in workers compensation and medical plans costs as well as increase productivity.

We know what repetitive injuries are, how they occur, and how to prevent them. And we were well on the way to significantly reducing the crippling injuries that 600,000 workers suffer on the job every year. We were on our way, until the business-backed disinformation campaign and George W. Bush's political betrayal of working Americans killed the standard.

The UFCW demands a new ergonomics standard, a standard, with strong enforcement measures, that requires employers to take action to protect workers from crippling injuries. Over the last 15 years, UFCW has been at the forefront of the fight to stop the pain of repetitive motion injuries. UFCW members are now ready to go to war on workplace injuries. That war begins here and now.

UFCW members will file charges with OSHA on ergonomic hazards and demand enforcement under the law's general duty provision. UFCW will conduct a comprehensive information campaign to inform non-union workers about how to file charges on ergonomic hazards.

And UFCW will mobilize workers for political action. The debate on ergonomics isn't about safety, science or solutions. It's about politics. Business had the political clout to kill the standard and they did it. Workers are going to get the power, and we are going to get the standard back.

Finally, I ask that the entire federal government record on ergonomics since 1990, from the Department of Labor to Congress, be made part of the record of these forums. The record of a decade leads to the inescapable conclusion: we need an ergonomic standard, and that an ergonomic standard would prevent injuries. Thank you.