[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Page 6245]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                       WORKERS MEMORIAL DAY 2000

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, on Friday, April 28, 2000, we remembered 
and honored the sacrifices of the men and women across the years who 
have lost their lives on the job. We also marked the 30th anniversary 
of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which has done so much to 
reduce such casualties by improving conditions in the workplace for 
employees across the country. On this day, we renewed our commitment to 
fair and safe working conditions for every American.
  The progress that we have made over the past 30 years is remarkable. 
In 1970, the year the Occupational Safety and Health Act was signed 
into law, 13,800 workers died on the job. Since then, workplace 
fatality rates have fallen by 74 percent. Over 200,000 lives have been 
saved. Injury rates have fallen by more than a third.
  In observance of this important day, we must also remember the lives 
and the families that have been irrevocably changed by workplace 
injuries and illnesses. Despite the progress, 154 people still lose 
their lives on the job on the average day. Last year in Massachusetts, 
91 workers died on the job--more than double the number in 1998. 
Currently, it is estimated that 1,000 deaths a year result from work-
related illnesses, and 1,200 workers a year are diagnosed with cancer 
caused by their jobs. Clearly, those high numbers are unacceptable.
  As the global economy continues to expand and change the new 
workplace, new challenges are created for ensuring adequate safety 
protections. The modern workplace is being restructured by downsizing 
staff, larger output quotas, mandatory overtime, and job consolidation. 
This restructuring creates new pressures on workers to be more 
productive in the name of efficiency and competitiveness. New 
technologies in the workplace make it easier to do jobs faster, but 
they pose new hazards as well.
  For ten years, workers have been struggling to achieve a workplace 
free from ergonomic injuries and illnesses. Since 1990, Secretary of 
Labor Elizabeth Dole announced the Department of Labor's commitment to 
issuing an ergonomics standard, more than 6 million workers have 
suffered serious job injuries from these hazards. Each year, 650,000 
workers lose a day or more of work because of ergonomic injuries, 
costing businesses $15-20 billion per year.
  Ursula Stafford, 24 years old, worked as a paraprofessional for the 
New York City school district. She was injured assisting a 250-pound 
wheelchair-bound student. She received no training on how to lift the 
student, nor did her employer provide any lifting equipment. After two 
days on the job, she suffered a herniated disc and spasms in her neck. 
As a result of her injuries, her doctor told her that she may not be 
able to have children, because her back may not be able to support the 
weight.
  Charley Richardson, a shipfitter at General Dynamics in Quincy, 
Massachusetts, sustained a career-ending back injury when he was 
ordered to install a 75-pound piece of steel to reinforce a deck. 
Although he continued to try to work, he found that on many days, he 
could not endure the pain of lifting and using heavy tools. For years 
afterwards, his injury prevented him from participating in basic 
activities. The loss that hurt Charley the most was having to tell his 
grandchildren they could not sit on his lap for more than a couple of 
minutes, because it was too painful. To this day, he cannot sit for 
long without pain.
  OSHA has proposed an ergonomics standard to protect workers from 
these debilitating injuries. Yet in spite of the costs to employers and 
to workers and their families, industry has launched an all-out, no-
holds-barred effort to prevent OSHA from issuing this important 
standard. A stronger standard would go a long way to reducing this 
leading cause of injury.
  Ergonomics programs have been shown to make a difference in reducing 
the number of injuries that occur on the job. Johns Hopkins University 
initiated a program which significantly reduced the rate of such 
injuries by 80 percent over seven years. A poultry processor's program 
lowered the incidence of workers' compensation claims by 20 percent. A 
program by Intel Corporation produced a savings of more than $10 
million.
  Hopefully, after this long battle, a national ergonomics standard 
will finally be put in place this year. If so, it will be the most 
significant workplace safety protection in the 30 years since OSHA 
became law. The ergonomic standard will be a landmark achievement in 
improving safety and health for all workers in America. May this 
Workers Memorial Day serve as a monument to the progress we are making, 
and as a constant reminder of our obligation to do more, much more, to 
achieve the great goal we share.

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