Worker safety versus ‘corporate greed’ debated

Grace Leong

Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2001 | 11 a.m.

It's true that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. was one of many businesses that pushed for a repeal of ergonomics rules imposed by the Clinton administration aimed at preventing workplace injuries.

But the world's largest retailer recognizes the benefits of ergonomics in boosting productivity, morale and reducing employee absenteeism and turnover, a Wal-Mart safety management executive said at a conference Tuesday in Las Vegas.

John Leyenberger, a divisional risk control director with Bentonville,Ark.-based Wal-Mart, said Wal-Mart criticized many of the ergonomics rules for their cost and scope and that it was "frustrated at being forced to deal with something (it) had no control over."

President George Bush in March signed a measure repealing the ergonomics rules issued in November 2000 by the the Occupational Safety and Health Administration or OSHA, saying the rules would have cost both large and small employers billions of dollars and presented employers with overwhelming compliance challenges.

The rollback was a loss to labor unions, which had fought for years for the regulations.

Leyenberger spoke at the National Ergonomics Conference and Exposition -- an event for ergonomics professionals and workplace safety experts that runs through Thursday at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

He said Wal-Mart, which has 2,600 stores and 1.2 million workers nationwide, spent millions of dollars in the past year redesigning its stores' backrooms or store rooms, which he said are hotspots for workplace injuries.

Wal-Mart made the changes after it found that many of its workers' injuries were caused by overexertion.

"By changing the configuration of shelving, adding power equipment, reducing the amount of merchandise workers have to manually carry, shrink-wrapping the merchandise before storage so it will have less of a chance of falling on our workers, we saw a 40 percent drop in accidents in the backrooms," he said.

Leyenberger said back injuries are the among the most common injuries suffered by cashiers at checkout areas.

They fell 35 percent after "carousel checkouts" or what he called "lazy susan" bag-stands were installed at 600 stores.

"We've been making the design changes since 1994. In fact, we found that 80 percent of the customers pick up the bag themselves, easing the amount of lifting cashiers had to do, and it led to an 8 percent increase in productivity."

Leyenberger said Wal-Mart was taking measures to ensure supervisors overcome what he called a "reluctance to accept the potential seriousness of ergonomically-related injuries," and to train and educate its workers about workplace safety. He said constant communication between workers, doctors and supervisors is key in managing medical claims.

Peter Budnick, president and chief executive of ergoweb, a Midway, Utah-based occupational ergonomics consultancy, said at least 75 percent of top Fortune 500 companies have an ergonomics program in place but many smaller companies aren't paying as much attention to programs.

"We believe that under-reporting of (erognomically-related) injuries means these are a bigger problem than the data indicated," he said.

Disagreeing with repeal of the OSHA rules was Greg Denier, spokesman for the grocery workers' union, the United Food and Commercial Workers. The UFCW is trying to organize Wal-Mart stores in a campaign originating in Las Vegas.

"The ergonomics standards' repeal was a big blow for workers. It was killed without any public forum and as a political payoff. Over 1 million workers nationwide have been ergonomically-injured since the repeal, and we believe that most of these injuries are needless injuries, and the result of the greed of American corporations."

Denier said that since the ergonomics rules' repeal, the AFL-CIO has been pushing Congress and the Labor Department to impose another ergonomic standard. Unions are also trying to negotiate stronger provisions within contracts to protect workers against ergonomic injuries.

He said the AFL-CIO is also assisting more workers in filing OSHA complaints and forcing companies to correct ergonomics hazards or conditions that would cause repetitive motion injuries.

"OSHA can still enforce the 'general duty' clause, which basically requires employers to provide safe workplaces for their employees," he said.