[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 29 (Wednesday, March 7, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H658-H667]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF S.J. RES. 6, DISAPPROVING DEPARTMENT OF 
                   LABOR RULE RELATING TO ERGONOMICS

  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I 
call up House Resolution 79 and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:

                               H. Res. 79

       Resolved, That upon receipt of a message from the Senate 
     transmitting the joint resolution (S.J. Res. 6) providing for 
     congressional disapproval of the rule submitted by the 
     Department of Labor under chapter 8 of title 5, United States 
     Code, relating to ergonomics, it shall be in order without 
     intervention of any point of order to consider the joint 
     resolution in the House. The joint resolution shall be 
     considered as read for amendment. The previous question shall 
     be considered as ordered on the joint resolution to final 
     passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of 
     debate equally divided and controlled by the chairman and 
     ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and the 
     Workforce; and (2) one motion to recommit.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bonilla). The gentleman from Georgia 
(Mr. Linder) is recognized for 1 hour.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the 
customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall); pending 
which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration 
of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.
  Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 79 is a closed rule providing for 
consideration of S.J. Res. 6. This bill provides for congressional 
disapproval of the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating 
to ergonomics.
  Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 79 provides for 1 hour of debate, equally 
divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of 
the Committee on Education and the Workforce. The rule also waives all 
points of order against consideration of S.J. Res. 6 in the House. 
Finally, the rule provides for one motion to recommit with or without 
instructions, as is the right of the minority.
  Mr. Speaker, the ergonomics rule finalized by OSHA on November 14, 
2000 is fatally flawed. This unworkable rule would require employers to 
implement a full blown, company-wide ergonomics program based on the 
report of just one injury by one employee.

                              {time}  1100

  The ergonomic symptom need not even be caused by work activity, as 
long as work activities aggravate it. Under this rule, employers could 
end up responsible for workers' injuries sustained on the softball 
field.
  This regulation also undermines State workers' compensation laws by 
creating a Federal workers' compensation system for musculoskeletal 
disorders. The parallel workers' compensation system mandated by OSHA 
for ergonomics injuries tramples on the State's ability to define what 
constitutes a work-related injury.
  It is important to understand that disapproving this regulation would 
not permit the Department of Labor from revisiting ergonomics. 
Secretary Chao has stated that she intends to pursue a comprehensive 
approach to ergonomics, including new rulemaking that addresses the 
fatal flaws in the current standard.
  The Congressional Review Act was made for regulations like the 
Department of Labor's ergonomics rule. This overly burdensome and 
impractical ergonomics standard was imposed by the Clinton 
administration as part of the same pattern of regulatory overreach that 
held employers responsible for unsafe conditions in telecommuters' home 
offices. By disapproving the ergonomics standard, Congress can support 
the voluntary efforts of employers who have made real reductions in 
ergonomics injuries and allow OSHA to focus on developing reasonable 
and workable ergonomics protections for the workplace.
  Mr. Speaker, some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle 
will no doubt insist that the rule does not allow for sufficient time 
for debate. In fact, the question before us is straightforward. Does 
OSHA's ergonomics rule overly constrain employers without

[[Page H659]]

 providing real benefits to employees? If Members confine their remarks 
to the matter at hand, which is the acceptance of the rule, there will 
be sufficient time to this question.
  This rule was approved by the Committee on Rules yesterday, and I 
urge my colleagues to support it, so that we may proceed with general 
debate and consideration of the bill.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder) 
for yielding me the time. I rise to oppose this closed rule. The rule 
will allow for the consideration of S.J. Res. 6. This is a resolution 
that would overturn the new Federal regulation to reduce workplace 
injuries.
  Under this rule, no amendments may be offered. Debate time is limited 
to only 1 hour.
  Last November, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration 
issued an ergonomics standard that would require employers to take 
steps to reduce work-related muscle, back and related bone disorders. 
These disorders are often the result of heavy lifting, repetitive 
motion and awkward working positions.
  The standard was issued after 10 years of discussion and study. It is 
intended to reduce the enormous number of job-related ergonomics 
injuries. An estimated 1.8 million Americans suffer from these kinds of 
disorders, and about one-third of these works require time off as a 
result of their injuries. The standard is aimed at improving the health 
of workers, as well as improving productivity.
  It is a good regulation. It is based on sound scientific studies. It 
will prevent hundreds of thousands of work-related injuries. If we 
approve this resolution, we will kill the regulation.
  The regulation does not go into effect until next October, and by 
killing it now we are not even giving the regulation a chance to work.
  Mr. Speaker, I am particularly concerned that we are acting through 
the special authority created by the Congressional Review Act to 
overturn Executive Branch regulations. I believe that never before has 
Congress used this authority.
  The resolution we are considering was brought up suddenly. In fact, 
Members of the Committee on Rules had only about an hour's notice last 
night before it came to the committee.
  The rule we are now considering permits only 1 hour of debate for the 
disapproval resolution. That is woefully inadequate, considering the 
importance of this issue to the American worker.
  Because Congress has never used the Congressional Review Act, we are 
now establishing the procedural precedent that could be followed in the 
future. It is not a good precedent.
  American workers deserve better treatment than this shabby attempt to 
deny them important protection from job-related injuries, and the 
American people deserve more deliberation from their representatives 
when making sweeping changes in the law. I urge my colleagues to defeat 
the rule and the resolution.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Kentucky (Mrs. Northup).
  Mrs. NORTHUP. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak in favor of this rule and 
in favor of the invocation of the Congressional Review Act.
  First of all, let us remember what the Congressional Review Act is 
for. It is for remedying extraordinary rules that would cause extreme 
damage in our country. It was signed by the former President. It was 
agreed to by both Chambers of Congress, and it was seen to be a good 
way to address a problem that might come up and be needed in the 
future. And if ever it is needed, today it is needed.
  We have a new rule that has been promulgated that would cause extreme 
damage to our workplace. Let us admit it, we are a land of prosperity 
right now primarily because of our workers. Let us give our workers 
their just due.
  They go to work every day. They are hard working. They are 
productive. They work smart, and they are dependable. It is those 
qualities that have remade our economy from the years where we wondered 
whether we could be internationally competitive, and it is those 
workers that have worked so hard, worked so smart, been so dependable 
that are at the core of the prosperity that Americans all over this 
country enjoy.
  The worst thing we can do as a government is to create regulations 
that would be so high in costs that they would push our best jobs 
outside of this country. It is a reoccurring challenge that we face 
every day to keep good jobs here in this country. We ought to dedicate 
ourselves to it.
  As I have seen workers and companies do in my district that have 
reversed decisions, in fact, to keep work on shore in this country, in 
my community instead of transferring it offshore, we have to work 
harder at that, and we have to be very careful that as we all work 
towards what we believe in that we do not create a rule that has the 
law of unintended consequences, of pushing our best jobs out of this 
country. That would be a terrible thank you to the workers of this 
country that have meant so much to our prosperity and will mean so much 
to our children's prosperity.
  Let us all say it and say it again, we are all for the same thing, we 
are for safe workplaces. We are for healthy workers, and we are here to 
make sure that investments in our economy are important so that we can 
balance both safe workplaces and healthy workers and keeping our jobs 
on shore.
  Mr. Speaker, I am from the position that I believe we can have both, 
prosperity, healthy workers and keep jobs in this country. Some people 
do not believe that is possible, but the workers in this country are 
the very best. They deserve an environment where they can keep the good 
jobs that they have earned and prospered in.
  Mr. Speaker, this regulation was passed in the final days of the last 
administration. It was passed in a hurry. It did not review the law of 
unintended consequences, and it did not consider what the costs would 
be to the economy.
  Mr. Speaker, I have six children. They are ages 19 to 29, and they 
believe that this country and the jobs that they are going to have in 
the future will mirror the good jobs that my generation has had and 
depended on so that they can raise families and buy their first home 
and enjoy the benefits that our good jobs and our best workers have 
made possible for us.
  Please, let us not let our government tinker around in a regulation 
that would cost so much money, that would drive the cost of every good 
up, that would reduce our ability to be internationally competitive, 
that would make older workers and I want to say middle-aged workers, 
because that is where I consider myself, impossible to employ for the 
fear that workplaces would be wary of the costs they would incur to 
accommodate those workers.
  We have to protect the workplace for our workers, they are the best 
for our country.
  Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman 
from California (Mrs. Capps).
  Mrs. CAPPS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to this 
rule and to the resolution for overturning the new OSHA standards for 
worker safety. Repealing this standard would not only eliminate this 
important worker protection, but it would effectively prohibit OSHA 
from ever issuing a similar standard to protect workers from 
musculoskeletal disorders. How appalling.
  OSHA's standards for worker safety is critically important to working 
men and women. The lives of workers who suffer from disorders like 
carpal tunnel syndrome, tendinitis or back injuries are changed 
forever. Many workers lose their jobs, are permanently unemployed or 
forced to take severe pay cuts in order to continue working. This 
injustice must end.
  As a public health nurse, I know how debilitating these injuries and 
illnesses can be. For example, nursing home employees experienced more 
on-the-job back injuries as a percentage of their overall injuries than 
any other occupation. Most of them are women.
  Mr. Speaker, I support the OSHA standard because it is based on sound 
science and good employer practices. It is the most effective means to 
prevent workplace injuries. And under this standard, I believe that 
businesses will

[[Page H660]]

save money in the long run through reduced workers claims for 
compensation and other health insurance claims.
  Mr. Speaker, I am so disappointed that Congress is attempting to 
repeal this important safeguard and to deny significant medical and 
scientific findings. These objective studies all agree that workers 
need safety protection for repetitive motion injuries. Injuries like 
these are only going to increase in our economy as so many sit at 
computers or stand at assembly lines.
  It is time to stop the pain, to start the healing and to protect 
workers from workplace injuries. Let us vote down this rule and this 
resolution.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman 
from North Carolina (Mr. Watt).
  Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from 
Georgia (Mr. Linder) for yielding me the time.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule and in opposition to 
this proposal to undo a set of regulations that I believe will be 
beneficial not only to American workers but to small businesses.
  Some 25 years ago, before I came to this body, I did a lot of 
workers' compensation work in the practice of law on behalf of 
employees, and we were light-years behind at that time, because I 
remember in North Carolina litigating the first case that established 
carpal tunnel syndrome as an occupational disease under the North 
Carolina Workers' Compensation law.
  What was required on one side, on my side, the employee's side, was a 
group of experts that connected these injuries to conditions in the 
workplace, and on the employer side, a group of experts that denied 
that there was any connection between the workplace setting and these 
kinds of diseases. So what we would have is hours and hours and 
thousands of dollars of expert opinion time on both sides of this 
issue.
  We got through that, and we set up a standard in North Carolina, and 
we have gotten through that. And after 5 years of study now, we have 
set up a standard at the national level, and what I am going to submit 
to my colleagues is that while this undoing of regulations might be 
beneficial to big businesses who have experts on their payroll 
accessible to them at all points, small businesses are going to have to 
go back to a situation where they have to go out and hire experts to 
come in and defend these cases, and employees are going to be put to 
the burden, financial and otherwise, of hiring experts.
  It is going to be a swearing contest again in the absence of these 
regulations. While I think what my colleagues on the Republican side 
are trying to do will, in fact, benefit and advantage big business, 
that is what they are all about, I do not think this is going to be 
beneficial at all to small businesses.
  Mr. Speaker, I think it is going to have a tremendously negative 
impact on employees because there will be no standards, and we will be 
turning the clock back and going back to a time when even in the face 
of compelling and overwhelming scientific evidence each individual case 
will have to be litigated separately with an absence of standards.

                              {time}  1115

  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I might consume 
to respond that. With respect to litigation, these rules would begin it 
all over again. Any little accident on a football field could be said 
to hurt more when one is working and, therefore, is workplace related; 
and, therefore, there is a requirement that the entire business has to 
change its position, its offices to facilitate one injury.
  With respect to whether big business is being helped by this or not, 
most big businesses have made a mantra out of the phrase ``safety is 
job one.'' Most big businesses have very few problems with safety. They 
would be fine with this.
  But most of the new jobs are created by small business. Perhaps 95 
percent of the jobs created in the last 8 years were created by 
entrepreneurs who started with one employee and hopefully ended up with 
50. They are the ones who are going to be the most burdened by these 
rules.
  Let me lastly say that we are not least in the interest of harming 
workers. We are neither in the interest of harming workers or reducing 
the ability of OSHA through the Labor Department to come up with some 
real protections regarding ergonomics; we are opposed to this 
overreaching intrusive rule that could shut down businesses.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman 
from California (Mr. George Miller).
  (Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to 
revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, what is taking place 
here today is not terribly complicated. It is pretty straightforward. 
It is an unapologetic assault on some of the hardest working men and 
women in this country. It is an assault on the right to be pain free in 
their job. It is an assault on their right not to be injured on their 
job. It is an assault on their right to provide the wherewithal for 
their families.
  Because the workers who suffer these workplace injuries lose wages, 
they lose hours, and they lose jobs, which means they cannot provide 
what they want for their families.
  But the Republicans in the Congress have decided that they are going 
to assault these workplace rules in spite of all the science, in spite 
of all the evidence, in spite of all the medical testimony about the 
terrible toll that these workplace injuries take upon America's working 
men and women, and disproportionately on women. Women are 40 percent of 
the work force. There is over 63 percent of the injuries.
  They have decided also that, not only are they going to assault 
America's workers, they are going to insult America's workers. They are 
going to insult them in the manner in which they bring this to the 
floor of the Congress. They are not going to use a procedure that 
allows for 10 hours of debate so those who are pro this regulation and 
against this regulation can debate it. But they have decided we will 
only be given 1 hour of debate. That will be a half an hour on each 
side for 435 Members of Congress.
  So they are going to take 10 years of work, 10 years of scientific 
study, 10 years of medical evidence, 10 years of worker testimony and 
business testimony, and they are going to overturn it in 1 hour of 
debate.
  Now, I guess one could argue that maybe the Republicans do not know 
who these workers are. They do not see them with the wrist braces, with 
the finger braces, with the elbow brace, with the shoulder braces, with 
their arms in a sling, with the back braces. They do not see them at 
Home Depot. They do not see them at Wal-Mart. They do not see them at 
United Airline as they are making out their tickets or as their flight 
attendants on their airplane are serving them meals or the people who 
handle their baggage.
  They do not see them when the UPS driver comes by or the FedEx worker 
comes by and drops off their packages and is wearing a brace on their 
arm. They do not see them in the lumber mills. They do not see them as 
the health-care attendants and the nurses in our hospitals. They do not 
see them in the Safeway stores, the checkers at the stand who are 
wearing braces on their arms because of repetitive motion injuries to 
them.
  They do not see these workers when it is painful for them to get into 
the car to drive to work because their arms and their wrists and their 
hands are so badly damaged from being a key punch operator. They do not 
see them when they get into their cars painfully to drive home. They do 
not see them when they get into their house and they cannot pick up 
their children because their arms are so badly damaged from repetitive 
motion or their back is badly damaged from repetitive motion or from 
loads on their back.
  Somehow the Republicans do not see these individuals. But America 
sees them. We see them when we fly. We see them when we go to the 
supermarket. We see them when we go to the hardware store. We see them 
in the hospitals as they take care of members of our family. We see 
them as they turn over a patient in bed. And they are wearing braces on 
their arms because of these kinds of workplace injuries, the very same 
injuries that Republicans are insisting now that American

[[Page H661]]

workers do not have the right of protection from.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Kentucky (Mrs. Northup).
  Mrs. NORTHUP. Mr. Speaker, in this new atmosphere of bipartisanship, 
I am going to avoid being insulted by the claim of the gentleman from 
California (Mr. George Miller), the previous speaker, that somehow we 
do not see these things.
  But I do for the record want to make a note that my daughter, who 
works for UPS from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. in the morning actually had two of 
these braces on her hand. She does suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome. 
As a credit to the company, they do every single thing they can in 
terms of job rotation, in terms of remediation in remedying this 
problem.
  How dare we, how dare we act as though we do not care about these 
workers or that they are not our own daughters and our own sons.
  Let me just say that, first of all, I would like to respond to the 
fact that this will save money. If this rule would really save money, 
then the Federal Government ought to apply this rule to its own 
workers. One may notice that the Labor cabinet does not inflict this 
rule on Federal employees, which means that, if there is money to be 
saved, our taxpayers will not save this money that could be saved.
  Why would we ever apply something to the private workplace and not 
apply it to Federal workers and hold Federal employers responsible at 
exactly the same level that we hold the private workplace?
  Let me also congratulate the workplaces that are already spending 
enormous sums of money to address this issue. All of us know in 
workplaces that, where we are, maybe in our own offices, I might add, 
where we have spent money to address these problems, we are to 
recognize that, as a country, we are addressing this problem.
  But the big problem here is that, as we address this problem, because 
let us face it, in our economy, we need every worker we can get. It is 
important to us that we keep them healthy and able to work so that we 
are able to keep our economy growing.
  But there is someplace where there is not every worker working. There 
are places overseas where they are desperate to have our jobs and they 
are eager for our data processing jobs and they would be glad to have 
them at the less cost. It is very easy to transfer those jobs overseas; 
and with one click of the mouse, one can send all that processed 
information back into this country and not have the unreasonable cost 
that this rule invokes.
  This problem is not that we went on 10 years, it is that we had a 
Labor cabinet that was totally tone deaf. They did not learn anything 
from all of the testimony they took. They were determined to take an 
idea that was hatched back in the early 1990s, and let us give 
Elizabeth Dole credit for the first person that raised this issue and 
had a good idea about ergonomic problems, and hijacked it and took it 
in a very wrong direction.
  There is no balance to this rule. That is why we are here today 
because 10 years have been wasted by somebody that never listened to 
what the balance was in this issue.
  Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis).
  Ms. SOLIS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to bringing this 
resolution forward, Senate Joint Resolution 6 to the floor. This 
legislation would repeal the worker-safety standards recently 
established by OSHA. Remember, it took 10 long years to get here. We 
studied this thing to death.
  The worker-safety standards are critically important to preventing 
work-related injuries, and it is shameful that the Republican majority 
is trying to overturn them.
  Maybe those of us in Congress do not have to worry about repetitive 
injuries or forceful exertion or awkward postures because of the type 
of work we do. But look at the stenographers right in front of us that 
sit here day in and day out, does one not think that they might have 
had some problems with carpal tunnel syndrome?
  Take a look around your own offices. I know in my district office it 
is very important that we have safety protections put in place.
  Mr. Speaker, I know also in my district we have many constituents who 
work in a hard and unsafe manner, many of them work in sweat shops, 
many of them work for big garment industries, they work 10 and 12 hours 
sewing materials, barely being able to lift up their heads. Many of 
them are women, many of them are new immigrants that come to this 
country with the hope of prosperity in bringing up their families. They 
sacrifice themselves for that. The least that we can do is provide them 
with better protections in the workplace.
  I know that myself and many of my colleagues in California have 
worked hard to study this issue as well. As a member of the State 
Senate and former chair of the labor committee there, we worked hard to 
try to bring labor and businesses together on this.
  Mr. Speaker, it is shameful to see that the Chamber of Commerce is 
opposing this very important legislation.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from 
Georgia (Mr. Norwood).
  Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for the 
time, and as our ranking minority member said a few minutes ago, this 
is not a very complicated issue. This is not an issue about basically 
ergonomics and workforce problems with repetitive motion, this is an 
issue about a rule that is absolutely awful. It is about a rule that 
will stop repetitive motion injuries by making sure people cannot work. 
It is a rule that must be rewritten in a fair and balanced way.
  On November 14, 2000, OSHA finalized a fatally flawed rule that 
regulates every motion in the workplace. But OSHA did not stop there. 
As they did years ago with the blood-borne pathogen standard, OSHA also 
created a Federal workers' compensation system that will undermine 
State workers' compensation laws.
  This ergonomics regulation simply cannot be salvaged as written. This 
must be sent back to the drawing board, and that is what this debate is 
about, that is what this vote is about. This is a bad rule. Let us 
begin again and get it right.
  Although OSHA tells us that this is an ergonomics regulation, this 
regulation is not limited to those repetitive stress injuries generally 
associated with ergonomics; no, this ergonomics regulation covers all 
disorders of the muscles, the nerves, the tendons, the ligaments, the 
joints, cartilage, blood vessels, and spinal disks.
  To make matters worse, OSHA has made it nearly impossible in this 
rule for an employer to claim that an injury is not work related. Any 
MSD injury, no matter how caused, will be considered work related if 
work makes it hurt. Think about that.
  Instead of creating an ergonomics regulation that helps employers and 
employees prevent repetitive stress syndrome, OSHA has created a rule 
that makes employers responsible for softball injuries. Despite this 
wide-open definition, OSHA felt that some employees would still find 
some way to claim that softball injuries were not work related. So OSHA 
made it illegal for employers to ask the employee's doctor about 
nonwork causes of injury. Think about that.
  Despite the extreme difficulty of determining the cause of any MSD 
injury, OSHA requires employers to begin redesigning their workplaces 
based upon the report of one injury by one employee. The single-injury 
trigger raises the likelihood that employers will be required to embark 
on expensive redesigns of their workplaces because of injuries that 
were not caused at work. Think of the connotation of that and what it 
does to jobs.
  OSHA was not content, however, to merely require expensive redesigns 
of workplaces across the country, OSHA also set up a Federal workers' 
compensation system that will undermine existing State workers' 
compensation laws. OSHA has mandated a parallel workers' compensation 
system for ergonomic injuries that will pay higher rates of 
compensation than for other injuries covered by State workers' 
compensation. Think about that.

                              {time}  1130

  The tragedy of this regulation is that workers do suffer injuries 
caused by repetitive stress. Fortunately, these injuries have declined 
by 22 percent over the past 5 years, thanks to the voluntary efforts of 
employers. Instead of

[[Page H662]]

building on these efforts, OSHA has issued a rule that assumes that 
every employer is a bad actor that will not help its own employees, 
even when it saves the employer money. Think about that.
  By finalizing a regulation that is universally opposed by the 
regulated community, OSHA has shown its contempt for employers, many of 
whom have made a great effort to establish comprehensive, voluntary 
ergonomic programs in the workplace. By disapproving the ergonomics 
regulation, Congress can support the voluntary efforts of employers 
that have brought real reduction in ergonomic injuries, and OSHA can 
focus on promoting reasonable and workable ergonomic protections for 
the workplace.
  This is about eliminating a bad rule.
  Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman 
from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez).
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise in the strongest opposition to this 
abandonment of American workers. Elections have consequences, and today 
the Republican leadership starts down a road on what I believe will be 
a long list of repealing worker rights. It is shameful.
  Today, the Republican leadership will sacrifice the health and safety 
of hard-working Americans for pure political gain. This is nothing more 
than Republicans paying back their big contributors who helped them get 
all elected. It is certainly not compassionate, and the process being 
used today to overturn workplace safety is not bipartisan.
  Common sense tells us that workers are our most valuable asset. 
Without them there are no corporate profits, without them there are not 
going to be increasing stock prices, without them as the hard-working 
engine there is no one fueling our economy. But Republicans argue that 
it would cost companies too much to protect them, despite the fact that 
these workplace injuries are already costing businesses $50 billion a 
year and that there are 600,000 men and women suffering from such 
injuries each year.
  These are men and women who cannot prepare dinner for their families 
or help dress their kids for school because their hands have been 
crippled by repetitive-stress injuries; or who cannot have the joy of 
picking up their child because of back injuries, injuries that are no 
fault of the workers themselves.
  To argue these protections were rushed through at the last minute is 
to deny that more than 10 years ago this effort was started by a 
Republican Labor Secretary. My colleagues should understand that if 
they vote for this resolution they will repeal and strip away a right 
American workers have now and that there will be no recourse.
  American workers have been driving our Nation's economy. Today, 
Republicans throw them in the back seat and take them for a ride. Vote 
against the rule and the resolution. Protect America's workers. Help 
our families and stand by what is right in making sure that that which 
drives this economy, which is the labor of men and women, is preserved.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Georgia (Mr. Norwood).
  Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this 
time. I just want to point out this does not repeal anything. This is 
us standing up as the Congress of the United States and saying this 
Federal agency wrote a bad rule. We have let them get away with this 
over and over again.
  This does not mean that Secretary Chao, the new Secretary, will not 
write ergonomic regulations; but it does mean, however, we will repeal, 
we will disagree, we will say the way they wrote these rules will not 
do.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. NORWOOD. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman clearly recognizes 
that if we have a set of rules that protect workers today and we repeal 
them we are taking away a right they presently have.
  Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, the gentleman does 
recognize that this set of rules may well not protect workers because 
they may not have a job in which to be protected.
  OSHA people are not going to Mexico and they are not going to Canada 
to check on them. We need to write a set of rules that will encourage 
employers in the workplace to be healthy and safe, including ergonomic 
rules. But this rule is a bad rule, and that is all we are talking 
about.
  The Labor Department issued a bad rule. Let us get rid of it and 
write a good rule.
  Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman 
from California (Ms. Waters).
  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, Republicans have a bad reputation for 
supporting the rich and the powerful and disregarding the needs and 
concerns of low-wage workers, poor people, and working people in 
general; and they have wasted no time in attempting to repeal worker 
safety standards.
  I am surprised that they would move so quickly and so blatantly to do 
this. This attempt by Republicans to disapprove the results of the 
congressionally mandated OSHA study is a blatant example again of the 
extent the Republicans will go to protect those corporate interests.
  During all of this delay and these delaying tactics, over 600,000 
workers suffered injuries caused by repetitive motion, heavy lifting, 
and forceful exertion. These kinds of injuries affect every sector of 
the economy: nurses, who are lifting people, rolling over the sick, 
taking care of their bed sores; cashiers who stand there all day 
punching and counting and adding; computer operators.
  Everybody knows about this. Members should talk to the computer 
operators in their own offices, talk to their office workers. Many of 
them are requiring special equipment to work with to protect them. 
Truck drivers, construction workers and meat cutters, all of these 
people are affected; and we should want to do something to help the 
workers that basically make the least amount of money, that are the 
most vulnerable, the ones who have the least dollars to take care of 
their families with to get the kind of medical help that they need to 
address these kinds of issues. I think it is obvious.
  I certainly hope that the Members of this House will not support this 
disapproval resolution by the opposite side of the aisle. I hope that 
we can draw attention to what they are trying to do. American workers 
deserve better than this.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from 
Georgia (Mr. Kingston).
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this 
time, and I want to start out just asking a couple of questions here.
  Should a grocery store employee be prohibited from bagging a turkey 
that weighs more than 15 pounds? Now, I have a family of four, so if I 
can find a 15 pound turkey, I am going to buy it. Now, my wife can pick 
up a 15 pound turkey because she has been picking up four children. 
Most kids quickly get to be in excess of 15 pounds. But let us just 
think this through. Libby Kingston goes to the Piggly-Wiggly to buy the 
15 pound turkey and she lifts it up; yet the 18-year-old football 
player from Savannah High School, Johnny Simmons, cannot lift it from 
the cashier to the bag.
  Maybe we need to install forklifts at all the Piggly-Wigglys so that 
we can get those 15 pound turkeys into the bags so that the mamas can 
pick them right up and carry them and put them into the SUVs.
  Another question. Should hospitals and nursing home employees be 
restricted in their ability to help lift patients from their bed? I 
have an employee right now whose father, very sadly, has suffered a 
stroke, and he needs assistance when he goes to the bathroom. Now, 
under these rules it is no problem, all an employee has to do is say, 
Well, you are on your own. We know you had your stroke, but, good luck, 
sorry, I am on break right now. That is what these rules do.
  Should a worker be prohibited from spending more than 4 hours a day 
at a keyboard? I am glad the previous speaker said her employees seem 
to be suffering from this every day at the word processors. I do not 
know, but maybe she should move them to another job. My folks over at 
the first district of Georgia, they can spend 4 hours a day at a 
keyboard. And if they cannot, they can tell me and we can work it out.
  Here is one of the questions. Maybe not all employees should be 
picking up

[[Page H663]]

15 pound turkeys, maybe not all employees in hospitals should be 
helping patients go to the bathroom, and maybe not all employees should 
be sitting at a keyboard for 4 hours; but that, my colleagues, should 
be the decisions made locally at the place of employment, not by some 
bureaucrat in Washington who knows everything.
  What is it with the Democrat Party that they think the wizards of Oz 
are in Washington, D.C. and that they should dictated to all the 
businesses all over the country who should do what, when they should do 
it, and how they should do it?
  I will give another example. A couple of years ago this same outfit 
came into my district and told a woman who runs a courier service with 
two cars, she takes packages from the north side of town to the south 
side of town, it is real complicated business, from a government 
standpoint, they came in and told her that she would need to have a 
smoking and a nonsmoking car for her smoking and nonsmoking employees 
to deliver packages to smoking and nonsmoking businesses. She said, 
``Guys, I only have two cars. I can figure this out in Savannah, 
Georgia. Why don't you all go back to Washington and solve real 
problems. Get a real life.''
  All this is about is common sense. We are not pulling out the rug on 
workers' safety. This is saying there is still going to be Federal 
worker-protection laws. There will still be State worker-protection 
laws. There will be all kinds of insurance and business premises rules 
and regulations.
  I know it is hard for some people to understand, but there are 
business owners and entrepreneurs who do not want their employees hurt. 
Hey, what a revolutionary thought for the liberal party.
  The fact is the National Academy of Sciences was coming out with 
rules and regulations on ergonomics; but the Clinton folks, on their 
way out of town, along with pardoning a lot of people at 2 in the 
morning, decided, hey, lets jam this through on the small businesses 
and the entrepreneurs of America on the way out of town, and let the 
next administration try to make sense of it.
  That is all this legislation does. It lets the current administration 
try to make some sense, some common sense, out of another bureaucratic 
nightmare out of Washington, D.C.
  Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, can the Chair tell me how much time we 
have remaining?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. 
Hall) has 13\1/2\ minutes remaining, and the gentleman from Georgia 
(Mr. Linder) has 8 minutes remaining.
  Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman 
from Ohio (Mrs. Jones).
  Mrs. JONES of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding 
me this time, and to the previous speaker I would say, I am not the 
Wizard of Oz, I am Dorothy, and I am pulling the cloak off the wizard 
to let you know that the rule here, the disapproval resolution, does 
not only rescind the rule, it prohibits issuance of a similar rule. A 
bad rule.
  I am worried about my mother, 80 years old, who folded boxes for a 
company. Her hand looks like this. I have said this on the floor 
before. It is like this because she cannot move it as a result of the 
repetitive motion of folding a box. Let us make the argument that 
instead of just saving money for companies, we might save the health 
care costs for all these workers who are stuck like this, or stuck like 
this, from doing repetitive motion.
  Wake up, Republican Party. Understand that we are not saying 
Republican-Democrats. We are for workers. Democrat-Republican, black-
white, male-female, old-young. Lifting a turkey? Lifting a turkey all 
day every day may present a problem. Women can lift babies, all women 
have lifted babies forever; but maybe that is the problem they have 
currently as a result of doing the repetitive motion.
  We are Dorothy, not the Wizard.
  Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman 
from Minnesota (Ms. McCollum).
  Ms. McCOLLUM. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule and the 
resolution.
  I came to Congress to represent the working men and women of 
Minnesota's fourth district, and they deserve the right to be protected 
in the workplace.

                              {time}  1145

  This resolution denies American workers the protection that they need 
from needless injuries. Repetitive motion injuries are painful and they 
are crippling. These injuries disproportionately impact women and 
workers in low wage jobs. The good news is that these injuries are 
preventable. My largest employer in the Fourth District, 3M, has 
reported that following the implementation of an ergonomics program, 
they reduced lost time injuries by 58 percent.
  The fact that the voices of millions of American workers have been 
restricted to 1 hour of debate is also an insult. This procedure not 
only repeals the ergonomic rule but will effectively prohibit OSHA from 
issuing workplace safety standards on this issue. That is the legacy of 
this resolution. As a result, millions of Americans will be needlessly 
injured.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Georgia (Mr. Norwood).
  Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Speaker, the previous speaker from the Democratic 
side made the point very nicely that if you will not have onerous 
rules, the workforce today, the employers today recognize the value of 
having workforce protections, and they have indeed. There is no 
question about it. Left alone, they have reduced repetitive motion 
stress in the workplace. But you are not going to get it reduced any 
further with the kind of onerous rule we are putting on them now.
  Remember what this is. This is about repealing a bad rule. It is not 
about making ergonomics go away. Lastly, I would simply add, it dawned 
on me as I was listening about the 15-pound turkey. I am more 
interested in the 15-pound child. What about the mothers all across 
America that have a 15-pound baby who is 8 months, 10 months old? What 
are we going to do next? In leaving the Labor Department to its own 
devices, we might. Should the Federal Government furnish a helper for 
every mother in America that has a 15-pound child that she lifts up and 
down all day?
  There are things in life we have to do in terms of our workforce. Can 
we make those better? Yes, of course we can make them better. It is 
pretty clear to me that the small businesses and large businesses of 
America are working on that, but we are not going to help them at all 
if we pass this rule. Let us get rid of a bad rule. For once let us say 
a Federal agency has written a bad rule and a bad regulation that will 
not solve the problem and let us try to relook at that and see if in 
fact we can help the workforce.
  Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Baca).
  (Mr. BACA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. BACA. Mr. Speaker, I rise against the rule. It is a shameful act 
that is being committed against the American worker this week. The 
Republicans have decided to strip away worker safety rules, protections 
we have fought hard for for working families across America. These 
protections have been under development for over a decade. In fact, 
they were initiated by former President Bush. They save money in the 
long term by reducing workplace injuries and keeping workers' 
compensation costs down. Many businesses have already adopted programs 
to reduce injuries. But opponents have repeatedly tried to block these 
protections. As a result, over 6 million workers have suffered injuries 
that could have been prevented. This affects everybody, nurses, 
construction workers, white collar workers. This is an attack on the 
American worker. We should oppose this cowardly effort.
  Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman 
from New York (Mr. Owens).
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule and to the 
effort to repeal the ergonomics standard. As the ranking Democrat on 
the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, I have followed this 
deliberation for the last 5 years. I have in my hand a chronology which 
shows it has gone on for 10 years. We have been considering what we 
should do about ergonomics.

[[Page H664]]

 Reasonable people, reasonable legislators, scientists, we have all 
been involved in this since August of 1990. At that time the Republican 
Secretary of Labor, Elizabeth Dole, committed herself to taking the 
most effective steps necessary to address the problem of ergonomic 
hazards on an industrywide basis and to begin rulemaking on an 
ergonomics standard. Secretary Dole said this is ``one of the Nation's 
most debilitating across-the-board worker safety and health illnesses 
of the 1990s.''
  The present Republican majority committed themselves to complying 
with the results of a study. We get one study and then they want 
another. I think we appropriated about a million dollars for the last 
study requested by the Republican majority. Now we are engaged in a 
process which says we are not interested in reason, logic, science, we 
are going to use brute political force. As Newt Gingrich says, politics 
is war without blood. We have the numbers, we have an army of business 
lobbyists behind us, and we are just going to overwhelm the Congress 
and make a decision which is inhumane and an unwise decision.
  A 10-year process ended in January of this year when the ergonomics 
standard was issued. In the same month, the results of a study was 
released and the scientists said again, in its second report in 3 years 
on musculoskeletal disorders, the report confirms that musculoskeletal 
disorders are caused by workplace exposures to risk factors, including 
heavy lifting, repetition, force and vibration and that interventions 
incorporating elements of OSHA's ergonomics standard have been proven 
to protect workers from ergonomic hazards.
  I have copies of this chronology for all people who have forgotten, 
especially those members of the Committee on Education and the 
Workforce. What we are experiencing today is the beginning of warfare 
on a large scale which has a psychological significance. It is very 
strategic. After we roll over ergonomics, it is going to be Davis-
Bacon's prevailing wage act. It is going to be onward marching toward 
the elimination of any consideration of any minimum wage from now until 
this administration goes out of power.
  This is war. It is war on the working families of America. You are 
declaring war. The working families of America need to understand this. 
The only way this war is going to be won is to let it be understood 
that the overwhelming power that appears to be in place for the 
Republicans in Washington at this point will not be utilized to wipe 
out all the gains we have made over the years for working families.
  Mr. Speaker, I include the following material for the Record:

                Chronology of OSHA's Ergonomics Standard

       August 1990--In response to statistics indicating that RSIs 
     are the fastest growing category of occupational illnesses, 
     Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole commits the Labor 
     Department to ``taking the most effective steps necessary to 
     address the problem of ergonomic hazards on an industry-wide 
     basis'' and to begin rulemaking on an ergonomics standard. 
     According to Secretary Dole, there was sufficient scientific 
     evidence to proceed to address ``one of the nation's most 
     debilitating across-the-board worker safety and health 
     illnesses of the 1990's.''
       July 1991--The AFL-CIO and 30 affiliated unions petition 
     OSHA to issue an emergency temporary standard on ergonomics. 
     Secretary of Labor Lynn Martin declines to issue an emergency 
     standard, but commits the agency to developing and issuing a 
     standard using normal rulemaking procedures.
       June 1992--OSHA, under acting Assistant-Secretary Dorothy 
     Strunk, issues an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on 
     ergonomics.
       January 1993--The Clinton Administration makes the 
     promulgation of an ergonomics standard a regulatory priority. 
     OSHA commits to issuing a proposed rule for public comment by 
     September 30, 1994.
       March 1995--The House passes its FY 1995 rescission bill 
     that prohibits OSHA from developing or promulgating a 
     proposed rule on ergonomics. Industry members of the 
     Coalition on Ergonomics lobbied heavily for the measure. 
     Industry ally and outspoken critic of government regulation, 
     Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), acts as the principal advocate of the 
     measure.
       --OSHA circulates draft ergonomics standard and begins 
     holding stakeholders' meetings to seek comment and input 
     prior to issuing a proposed rule.
       June 1995--President Clinton vetoes the rescission measure.
       July 1995--Outspoken critic of government regulation Rep. 
     David McIntosh (R-IN) holds oversight hearings on OSHA's 
     ergonomics standard. National Coalition on Ergonomics members 
     testify. By the end of the hearing, McIntosh acknowledges 
     that the problem must be addressed, particularly in high risk 
     industries.
       --Compromise rescission bill signed into law; prohibits 
     OSHA from issuing, but not from working on, an ergonomics 
     standard. Subsequent continuing resolution passed by Congress 
     continues the prohibition.
       August 1995--Following intense industry lobbying, the House 
     passes a FY 1996 appropriations bill that would prohibit OSHA 
     from issuing, or developing, a standard or guidelines on 
     ergonomics. The bill even prohibits OSHA from requiring 
     employers to record ergonomic-related injuries and illnesses. 
     The Senate refuses to go along with such language.
       November 1995--OSHA issues its 1996 regulatory agenda which 
     does not include any dates for the issuance of an ergonomics 
     proposal.
       December 1995--Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases 
     1994 Annual Survey of Injuries and Illnesses which shows that 
     the number and rate of disorders associated with repeated 
     trauma continues to increase.
       April 1996--House and Senate conferees agree on a FY 1996 
     appropriation for OSHA that contains a rider prohibiting the 
     agency from issuing a standard or guidelines on ergonomics. 
     The compromise agreement does permit OSHA to collect 
     information on the need for a standard.
       June 1996--The House Appropriations Committee passes a 1997 
     funding measure (H.R. 3755) that includes a rider prohibiting 
     OSHA from issuing a standard or guidelines on ergonomics. The 
     rider also prohibits OSHA from collecting data on the extent 
     of such injuries and, for all intents and purposes, prohibits 
     OSHA from doing any work on the issue of ergonomics.
       July 1996--The House of Representatives approves the Pelosi 
     amendment to H.R. 3755 stripping the ergonomics rider from 
     the measure. The vote was 216-205. Ergonomic opponents vow to 
     reattach the rider in the Senate or on a continuing 
     resolution.
       February 1997--Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-TX) circulates a draft 
     rider which would prohibit OSHA from issuing an ergonomics 
     proposal until the National Academy of Sciences completes a 
     study on the scientific basis for an ergonomics standard. The 
     rider, supported by the new coalition, is criticized as a 
     further delay tactic.
       --During a hearing on the proposed FY 1998 budget for the 
     National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Rep. 
     Bonilla questions Centers for Disease Control head David 
     Satcher on the scientific underpinnings for an ergonomics 
     standard. Bonilla submits more than 100 questions on 
     ergonomics to Satcher.
       April 1997--Rep. Bonilla raises questions about OSHA's 
     plans for an ergonomics standard during a hearing on the 
     agency's proposed FY 1998 budget.
       July 1997--NIOSH releases its report Musculoskeletal 
     Disorders and Workplace Factors. Over 600 studies were 
     reviewed. NIOSH concludes that ``a large body of credible 
     epidemiological research exists that shows a consistent 
     relationship between MSDs and certain physical factors, 
     especially at higher exposure levels.''
       --California's ergonomics regulation is initially adopted 
     by the Cal/OSHA Standard Board, approved by the Office of 
     Administrative Law, and becomes effective. (July 3)
       October 1997--A California superior court judge rules in 
     the AFL-CIO's favor and struck down the most objectionable 
     provisions of the CA ergonomics standard.
       November 1997--Congress prohibits OSHA from spending any of 
     its FY 1998 budget to promulgate or issue a proposed or final 
     ergonomics standard or guidelines, with an agreement that FY 
     1998 would be the last year any restriction on ergonomics 
     would be imposed.
       May 1998--At the request of Rep. Bonilla and Rep. 
     Livingston, The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) receives 
     $490,000 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to 
     conduct a review of the scientific evidence on the work-
     relatedness of musculoskeletal disorders and to prepare a 
     report for delivery to NIH and Congress by September 30, 
     1998.
       August 1998--NAS brings together more than 65 of the 
     leading national and international scientific and medical 
     experts on MSDs and ergonomics for a two day meeting to 
     review the scientific evidence for the work relatedness of 
     the disorders and to assess whether workplace interventions 
     were effective in reducing ergonomic hazards.
       October 1998--NAS releases its report Work-Related 
     Musculoskeletal Disorders: A Review of the Evidence. The NAS 
     panel finds that scientific evidence shows that workplace 
     ergonomic factors cause musculoskeletal disorders.
       --Left as one of the last issues on the table because of 
     its contentiousness, in its massive Omnibus spending bill 
     Congress appropriates $890,000 in the FY 1999 budget for 
     another NAS study on ergonomics. The bill, however, freed 
     OSHA from a prohibition on the rulemaking that began in 1994. 
     This point was emphasized by a letter to Secretary of Labor 
     Alexis Herman from then Chair of the Appropriations Committee 
     Rep. Livingston and Ranking member Rep. Obey expressly 
     stating that the study was not intended to block or delay 
     OSHA from moving forward with its ergonomics standard.
       December 1998--Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases 
     1997 Annual Survey of Injuries and Illnesses which shows that 
     disorders associated with repeated trauma continue to

[[Page H665]]

     make up nearly two-thirds of all illness cases and 
     musculoskeletal disorders continue to account for one-third 
     of all lost-workday injuries and illnesses.
       February 1999--OSHA releases its draft proposed ergonomics 
     standard and it is sent for review by small business groups 
     under the Small Business Regulatory and Enforcement Fairness 
     Act (SBREFA).
       March 1999--Rep. Blunt (R-MO) introduces H.R. 987, a bill 
     which would prohibit OHSA from issuing a final ergonomics 
     standard until NAS completes its second ergonomics study (24 
     months).
       April 1999--The Small Business Review Panel submits its 
     report on OSHA's draft proposed ergonomics standard to 
     Assistant Secretary Jeffress.
       May 1999--The second NAS panel on Musculoskeletal Disorders 
     and the Workplace holds its first meeting on May 10-11 in 
     Washington, DC.
       --Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) introduces legislation (S. 1070) 
     that would block OSHA from moving forward with its ergonomics 
     standard until 30 days after the NAS report is released to 
     Congress.
       --House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections holds mark-up 
     on H.R. 987 and reports out the bill along party line vote to 
     forward it to Full Committee.
       June 1999--House Committee on Education and the Workforce 
     holds mark-up on H.R. 987 and reports out the bill in a 23-18 
     vote.
       August 1999--House votes 217-209 to pass H.R. 987, 
     preventing OSHA from issuing an ergonomics standard for at 
     least 18 months until NAS completes its study.
       October 1999--Senator Bond offers an amendment to the LHHS 
     appropriations bill which would prohibit OSHA from issuing an 
     ergonomics standard during FY 2000. The amendment is 
     withdrawn after it becomes apparent that Democrats are set to 
     filibuster the amendment.
       --The California Court of Appeals upholds the ergonomics 
     standard--the first in the nation--which covers all 
     California workers.
       November 1999--Washington State Department of Labor and 
     Industries issues a proposed ergonomics regulation on 
     November 15 to help employers reduce ergonomic hazards that 
     cripple and injure workers.
       --Federal OSHA issues the proposed ergonomics standard on 
     November 22. Written comments will be taken until February 1, 
     2000. Public hearings will be held in February, March, and 
     April.
       February 2000--OSHA extends the period for submitting 
     written comments and testimony until March 2. Public hearings 
     are rescheduled to begin March 13 in Washington, DC followed 
     by public hearings in Chicago, IL and Portland, OR in April 
     and May.
       March 2000--OSHA commences 9 weeks of public hearings on 
     proposed ergonomics standard.
       May 2000--OSHA concludes public hearings on proposed 
     ergonomics standard. More than one thousand witnesses 
     testified at the 9 weeks of public hearings held in 
     Washington, DC, Chicago, Illinois, and Portland, Oregon. the 
     due date for post hearing comments is set for June 26; and 
     the due date for post hearing briefs is set for August 10.
       --The House Appropriations Committee adopts on a party line 
     vote a rider to the FY 2001 Labor-HHS funding bill (H.R. 
     4577) that prohibits OSHA from moving forward on any proposed 
     or final ergonomics standard. The rider was adopted despite a 
     commitment made by the Committee in the FY 1998 funding bill 
     to ``refrain from any further restrictions with regard to the 
     development, promulgation or issuance of an ergonomics 
     standard following fiscal year 1998.''
       June 2000--An amendment to strip the ergo rider from the FY 
     2001 Labor-HHS Appropriations bill on the House floor fails 
     on a vote of 203-220.
       --The Senate adopts an amendment to the FY 2001 Labor-HHS 
     bill to prohibit OSHA from issuing the ergonomics rule for 
     another year by a vote of 57-41.
       --President Clinton promises to veto the Labor-HHS bill 
     passed by the Senate and the House stating, ``I am deeply 
     disappointed that the Senate chose to follow the House's 
     imprudent action to block the Department of Labor's standard 
     to protect our nation's workers from ergonomic injuries. 
     After more than a decade of experience and scientific study, 
     and millions of unnecessary injuries, it is clearly time to 
     finalize this standard.''
       October 2000--Republican negotiators agree to a compromise 
     that would have permitted OSHA to issue the final rule, but 
     would have delayed enforcement and compliance requirements 
     until June 1, 2001. Despite the agreement on this compromise, 
     Republican Congressional leaders, acting at the behest of the 
     business community, override their negotiators and refuse to 
     stand by the agreement.
       November 2000--On November 14, OSHA issues the final 
     ergonomics standard.
       --In an effort to overturn the ergonomics standard several 
     business groups file petitions for review of the rule. Unions 
     file petitions for review in an effort to strengthen the 
     standard.
       December 2000--House and Senate adopt Labor-Health and 
     Human Services funding bill. The bill does not include a 
     rider affecting the ergonomics standard.
       January 2001--Ergonomics standard takes effect January 16.
       --NAS releases its second report in three years on 
     musculoskeletal disorders and the workplace. The report 
     confirms that musculoskeletal disorders are caused by 
     workplace exposures to risk factors including heavy lifting, 
     repetition, force and vibration and that interventions 
     incorporating elements of OSHA's ergonomics standard have 
     been proven to protect workers from ergonomic hazards.

  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I was prepared to respond to that, but I was 
afraid I would laugh so hard I would hurt myself.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Norwood).
  Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Speaker, since supposedly Republicans are not 
interested in reason or science, one might conclude that we have not 
read the study done by the National Academy of Sciences and maybe 
others have not, either. Let me just give my colleagues one little 
quote out of that study: ``None of the common musculoskeletal disorders 
is uniquely caused by work exposure.'' The study notes that nonwork 
factors can cause MSD, also, which is why we believe this particular 
rule and regulation, this particular standard, should be opposed.
  I would like to point out that though President Bush and Secretary 
Dole did bring to the forefront the discussion of workplace injuries 
and repetitive motion syndrome, none of them approve of how we got 
there with this rule. This is a bad set of rules and regulations that 
will only worsen the problem, not make it better. Today let us 
disapprove of the work that the Labor Department did over the last 8 
years, because it will not do what we all want to do, which is to make 
sure that our workplace is healthy and is safe.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. NORWOOD. I yield to the gentleman from New York.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman like a new study?
  Mr. NORWOOD. I just quoted right out of the new study.
  Mr. OWENS. Would he like another study? Or does he want to repeal it 
forever and ever? This is off the table forever?
  Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I am glad the gentleman 
asked that because what we are basically saying is the Labor Department 
last year issued a bad rule. We want the opportunity for the Secretary 
of Labor and the Bush administration to look at this and issue a good 
rule that in the end does help patients and does help workers in the 
workplace.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, does that mean that the gentleman does not 
agree with what the Senate passed?
  Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman 
from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).
  (Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise 
and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished 
gentleman from Ohio of the Committee on Rules for yielding me this 
time. I hope my words will carry forth through the general debate, and 
I hope that they will be listened to and that my colleagues will come 
to their senses and realize that we are not paid by the tax dollars of 
the American people to kneel on bended knee to financial interests who 
pay us to write their legislation.
  Members can sense from my words that I am particularly outraged that 
worker safety rules will fall today in the United States Congress. I am 
not only outraged but I am saddened. It brings me to near tears that we 
are so engaged with responding to special business interests that we 
cannot accept the fact that 600,000 workers have suffered injury from 
repetitive motion and heavy lifting. I say this in pain because I 
watched my father, just a laborer, work for a great part of his life, 
like most Americans, using a heavy pressing iron, up and down and up 
and down, to be able to afford a good life at that time in our economy 
for his family. As a young person, I worked in the United States Postal 
Service. I am very proud of that. I did the kind of work that men and 
women are doing every day in this country, up and down and up and down 
and moving one's arm. It is a kind of injury that you cannot see. The 
person looks perfectly fine, but the pain is severe.
  Today this rule disallows us to even add amendments to suggest that 
it is appropriate that we move forward with the OSHA rules which 
protects these workers all over America, waitresses and bus drivers and 
factory workers and small business workers who time

[[Page H666]]

after time are injured and we cannot solve their problem.
  I wonder what my good friend is asking for when he says he needs a 
study. The January 2001 National Academy of Sciences study once again 
concluded that there is abundant scientific evidence demonstrating that 
repetitive workplace motion can cause injuries and that such injuries 
can be prevented through work safety intervention. Did we not just hear 
Seattle, Washington, say thank you for the instructions that you gave 
us on how to secure our buildings against earthquakes? You saved lives.
  But yet on the floor of this House we are so committed to the rich 
interests of people who are saying it is going to cost us too much that 
the lives of working Americans, it pains me, it hurts my heart, are of 
disinterest. But yet we can come on the floor tomorrow and talk about 
returning tax dollars to the great Americans of this Nation. But it is 
hardworking Americans today that we just step on. I believe it is an 
outrage. As a member of the House Committee on Science, I have never 
heard anybody question the National Academy of Sciences. Give us a 
study. We will take a study. These rules have been coming for 25 years. 
Today we crush them in the name of my father and all Americans. This is 
a disgrace.
  Vote against the rule and vote against this legislation. It is a 
disgrace.
  Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior), our leader, the minority whip.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank my dear colleague the gentleman from 
Ohio (Mr. Hall) for yielding me this time.
  Mr. Speaker, let me take a moment to tell my colleagues about a woman 
by the name of Shirley Mack. Shirley is the mother of four and she is 
someone who is proud of the fact that she has always worked to support 
her children. That is why she took a job at a poultry plant. Shirley's 
job was to pull chicken bones out with her hands and then feed them 
into a skinner machine. She did this repetitively, hour after hour, day 
after day, month after month, year after year. Before long, Shirley 
began suffering some very intense pain in her arm and in her wrist. The 
company gave her some pills and sent her back to the line. The pills 
did not help her.

                              {time}  1200

  Finally, Shirley saw a trained physician and found out her problem 
had a name. It was called carpal tunnel syndrome. Her boss reassigned 
Shirley to do cleanup work; and then 3 days later, they fired her. This 
is not an uncommon story to hear of a worker in a poultry plant.
  The company took away Shirley's job, but they never took away her 
pain; pain that was so bad she cannot fix supper or she cannot push a 
grocery cart in a grocery store; pain so bad she cannot even hug her 
children without feeling that terrible hurt all over again.
  The National Academy of Sciences tells us workplace injuries like 
Shirley's are now so widespread that they cost our economy more than 
$20 billion a year, $20 billion a year.
  We have 1.8 million workers affected by an injury every year in this 
country. Over this 10-year period of study, we could have prevented 4.6 
million workers from having to go through what Shirley went through.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, smart businesses are working to reduce the risk of 
workplace injuries but not every employer is smart and not every 
employer cares about his or her employees. That is why the Republican 
Secretary of Labor, Elizabeth Dole, launched an effort that led to 
these very rules that we are considering and are in place and are law 
today; and that was 10 years ago.
  More than six million workers have suffered serious injury since; and 
many of them, as I said, could have been prevented.
  Now, I want my colleagues to think about that when they vote today. I 
want them to think about the price that Shirley Mack and her brothers 
and sisters who work in that chicken plant and pull out those bones and 
feed them into the skinner time after time, repetitively doing that, 
try to do this for more than 5 or 10 minutes in a day. I want them to 
think about other working mothers who cannot even use their hands and 
their arms to lift their crying babies out of their crib. When they are 
thought about, I want my colleagues to ask themselves, who is going to 
comfort those mothers and those children? Because I can say, it will 
not be the Business Roundtable and it will not be the Chamber of 
Commerce and it will not be the National Association of Manufacturers 
and it will not be the Republican leadership and it will not be this 
President.
  Mr. Speaker, this is the most important worker-safety rule that we 
have had on the floor of this House in decades. It means a lot to a lot 
of people. It means a lot to the people who work with their hands, who 
work with their back, who make this country work every single day. For 
us to go back on these rules, to cast them aside, to ignore them as if 
they were a piece of chicken is to do injustice to the people that make 
this country work. I beg my colleagues today to vote to retain these 
rules, to vote against this present rule and to give a sense of justice 
and dignity back to the working people who make America work.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I would just like to clear up a couple of things that 
have been said. These rules that have been put in force are not Mr. 
Bush's rules. Although they had the good sense to begin worrying about 
ergonomics 10 years ago, they would never have come up with these 
rules.
  If these rules were so simple and straightforward, why were they not 
brought forth during the legislative session? Why were they dropped on 
the table after the election when no Congress was in session?
  I am amazed they had time to do it when they were walking out the 
door with the furniture and the silverware, but they dropped it on the 
table to become effective 2 days before a new President was sworn in.
  They are not in effect now. They do not go into effect until October. 
So we are not taking away something that they already have. We have 
heard all kinds of things about numbers.
  One person said it is going to cost $20 billion a year and another 
$50 billion a year. Documents show about $6 billion a year. But nobody 
has mentioned the $125-billion-a-year cost on businesses. Nobody has 
concerned themselves with reshaping the workforce.
  I do not doubt that repetitive motion causes injuries. I do not 
dispute the 600,000 people number. But should we create an additional 
workers' compensation program on top of the States' programs for just 
these kinds of injuries? Are they worse injuries than someone who loses 
an arm or a leg on their job?
  Right now, a typical workers' compensation package for businesses 
lasts only 3 years and is rotated out because it is very expensive. Are 
we prepared here with these regulations to double that cost on our 
employees and employers over the next few years? Should we allow rules 
that presume injuries are work related? If the employer wants to find 
out if it is truly work related, should we not question a rule that 
says it is against the law for the employer to talk to the doctor about 
the work-related connection to even determine? Should we demand a 
workplace design based on the claim of one person, with one injury that 
may or may not have been workplace related?
  We are saying that common sense ought to prevail. If we carried this 
ruling to its ultimate conclusion, the Coca-Cola truck driver would be 
bringing the Coke bottles into the store one bottle at a time. Who is 
going to pay for that? The consumer, of course, will ultimately pay for 
all of this.
  We are saying get these egregious, overreaching rules off the table 
and let an administration with just as much care about worker safety as 
anyone else on this floor today impose some rules that would be helpful 
and not hurtful, and let us at least admit one thing. Workplace safety 
today, based on the initiatives of the employers, without some 
bureaucrat telling them how to live their lives, is safer than it has 
ever been at any time in the history of this great country. They have 
done it because it is in their best interest. It is in their financial 
interest to improve the workplace safety because

[[Page H667]]

it costs them money to have days out of work.
  It is my guess that there is not a single agency of the Federal 
Government that has workplace safety as safe, with as few days lost, as 
virtually any major corporation in the United States; and yet these are 
not going to be promulgated for this Federal Government. They are not 
going to be watched over.
  Let us take the time to take this rule off the table, give a new 
Secretary of Labor an opportunity to do the right thing with common 
sense.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the 
previous question on the resolution.
  The previous question was ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). The question is on the 
resolution.
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the ayes appeared to have it.
  Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground 
that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum 
is not present.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Evidently a quorum is not present.
  The Sergeant at Arms will notify absent Members.
  The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 222, 
nays 198, not voting 12, as follows:

                             [Roll No. 29]

                               YEAS--222

     Aderholt
     Akin
     Armey
     Bachus
     Baker
     Ballenger
     Barr
     Bartlett
     Barton
     Bass
     Bereuter
     Biggert
     Bilirakis
     Blunt
     Boehlert
     Boehner
     Bonilla
     Bono
     Brady (TX)
     Brown (SC)
     Bryant
     Burr
     Burton
     Buyer
     Callahan
     Calvert
     Camp
     Cannon
     Cantor
     Capito
     Carson (OK)
     Castle
     Chabot
     Chambliss
     Coble
     Collins
     Combest
     Cooksey
     Cox
     Crane
     Crenshaw
     Cubin
     Culberson
     Cunningham
     Davis, Jo Ann
     Davis, Tom
     Deal
     DeLay
     DeMint
     Diaz-Balart
     Doolittle
     Dreier
     Duncan
     Dunn
     Ehlers
     Ehrlich
     Emerson
     English
     Everett
     Ferguson
     Flake
     Fletcher
     Foley
     Fossella
     Frelinghuysen
     Gallegly
     Ganske
     Gekas
     Gibbons
     Gilchrest
     Gillmor
     Gilman
     Goode
     Goodlatte
     Goss
     Graham
     Granger
     Graves
     Green (WI)
     Greenwood
     Grucci
     Gutknecht
     Hall (TX)
     Hansen
     Hart
     Hastings (WA)
     Hayes
     Hayworth
     Hefley
     Herger
     Hilleary
     Hobson
     Hoekstra
     Horn
     Hostettler
     Houghton
     Hulshof
     Hunter
     Hutchinson
     Hyde
     Isakson
     Issa
     Istook
     Jenkins
     Johnson (CT)
     Johnson (IL)
     Johnson, Sam
     Jones (NC)
     Keller
     Kelly
     Kennedy (MN)
     Kerns
     King (NY)
     Kingston
     Kirk
     Knollenberg
     Kolbe
     LaHood
     Largent
     Latham
     LaTourette
     Leach
     Lewis (KY)
     Linder
     LoBiondo
     Lucas (OK)
     Manzullo
     McCrery
     McHugh
     McInnis
     McKeon
     Mica
     Miller (FL)
     Miller, Gary
     Moran (KS)
     Morella
     Myrick
     Nethercutt
     Ney
     Northup
     Norwood
     Nussle
     Osborne
     Ose
     Otter
     Oxley
     Paul
     Pence
     Peterson (PA)
     Petri
     Pickering
     Pitts
     Platts
     Pombo
     Portman
     Pryce (OH)
     Putnam
     Quinn
     Radanovich
     Ramstad
     Regula
     Rehberg
     Reynolds
     Riley
     Rogers (KY)
     Rogers (MI)
     Rohrabacher
     Ros-Lehtinen
     Royce
     Ryan (WI)
     Ryun (KS)
     Saxton
     Scarborough
     Schaffer
     Schrock
     Sensenbrenner
     Sessions
     Shadegg
     Shaw
     Shays
     Sherwood
     Shimkus
     Simmons
     Simpson
     Skeen
     Smith (MI)
     Smith (NJ)
     Smith (TX)
     Souder
     Spence
     Stearns
     Stump
     Sununu
     Sweeney
     Tancredo
     Tauzin
     Taylor (MS)
     Taylor (NC)
     Terry
     Thomas
     Thornberry
     Thune
     Tiahrt
     Tiberi
     Toomey
     Traficant
     Turner
     Upton
     Vitter
     Walden
     Wamp
     Watkins
     Watts (OK)
     Weldon (FL)
     Weldon (PA)
     Weller
     Whitfield
     Wicker
     Wilson
     Wolf
     Young (AK)
     Young (FL)

                               NAYS--198

     Abercrombie
     Allen
     Andrews
     Baca
     Baird
     Baldacci
     Baldwin
     Barcia
     Barrett
     Bentsen
     Berkley
     Berman
     Berry
     Blagojevich
     Blumenauer
     Bonior
     Borski
     Boswell
     Boucher
     Boyd
     Brady (PA)
     Brown (FL)
     Brown (OH)
     Capps
     Capuano
     Cardin
     Carson (IN)
     Clay
     Clayton
     Clement
     Clyburn
     Condit
     Conyers
     Costello
     Coyne
     Cramer
     Crowley
     Cummings
     Davis (CA)
     Davis (FL)
     Davis (IL)
     DeFazio
     DeGette
     Delahunt
     DeLauro
     Deutsch
     Doggett
     Dooley
     Doyle
     Engel
     Eshoo
     Etheridge
     Evans
     Farr
     Fattah
     Filner
     Ford
     Frank
     Frost
     Gephardt
     Gonzalez
     Gordon
     Green (TX)
     Gutierrez
     Hall (OH)
     Harman
     Hastings (FL)
     Hill
     Hilliard
     Hinchey
     Hinojosa
     Hoeffel
     Holden
     Holt
     Honda
     Hooley
     Hoyer
     Inslee
     Israel
     Jackson (IL)
     Jackson-Lee (TX)
     Jefferson
     John
     Johnson, E. B.
     Jones (OH)
     Kanjorski
     Kaptur
     Kennedy (RI)
     Kildee
     Kilpatrick
     Kind (WI)
     Kleczka
     Kucinich
     LaFalce
     Lampson
     Langevin
     Lantos
     Larsen (WA)
     Larson (CT)
     Lee
     Levin
     Lewis (GA)
     Lipinski
     Lofgren
     Lowey
     Lucas (KY)
     Luther
     Maloney (CT)
     Maloney (NY)
     Markey
     Mascara
     Matheson
     Matsui
     McCarthy (MO)
     McCarthy (NY)
     McCollum
     McDermott
     McGovern
     McIntyre
     McKinney
     McNulty
     Meehan
     Meek (FL)
     Meeks (NY)
     Menendez
     Millender-McDonald
     Miller, George
     Mink
     Moakley
     Mollohan
     Moore
     Moran (VA)
     Murtha
     Nadler
     Napolitano
     Neal
     Oberstar
     Obey
     Olver
     Ortiz
     Owens
     Pallone
     Pascrell
     Pastor
     Payne
     Pelosi
     Peterson (MN)
     Phelps
     Pomeroy
     Price (NC)
     Rahall
     Rangel
     Reyes
     Rivers
     Rodriguez
     Roemer
     Ross
     Rothman
     Roybal-Allard
     Rush
     Sabo
     Sanchez
     Sandlin
     Sawyer
     Schakowsky
     Schiff
     Scott
     Serrano
     Sherman
     Sisisky
     Skelton
     Slaughter
     Smith (WA)
     Snyder
     Solis
     Spratt
     Stark
     Stenholm
     Strickland
     Tanner
     Tauscher
     Thompson (CA)
     Thompson (MS)
     Thurman
     Tierney
     Towns
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Velazquez
     Visclosky
     Waters
     Watt (NC)
     Waxman
     Weiner
     Wexler
     Woolsey
     Wu
     Wynn

                             NOT VOTING--12

     Ackerman
     Becerra
     Bishop
     Dicks
     Dingell
     Edwards
     Lewis (CA)
     Roukema
     Sanders
     Shows
     Stupak
     Walsh

                              {time}  1232

  Ms. BERKELEY and Mr. HONDA changed their vote from ``yea'' to 
``nay.''
  Mr. BOYD, Mr. LUCAS of Kentucky and Mr. SANDLIN changed their vote 
from ``present'' to ``nay.''
  Mr. CARSON of Oklahoma and Mr. TURNER changed their vote from 
``present'' to ``yea.''
  So the resolution was agreed to.
  The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

                          ____________________