Sponsor of Repeal Bill Voices Appreciation

"Congress has done the right thing by voting to overturn the most intrusive, expensive, and job-killing regulation ever handed down by OSHA," says Senator Don Nickles (R-OK). "It was the right thing to do for employers and employees alone and I appreciate the work of the Printing Industries of America toward this effort."

Nickles was the sponsor of the repeal effort in the Senate. The six Democrats who voted for the repeal were Senators Max Baucus of Montana, John B. Breaux and Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, and Zell Miller of Georgia.

PIA and the Graphic Arts Technical Foundation (GATF), Sewickley, Pa., estimated that complying with the OSHA ergonomics standard would have cost printers between $10,000 and $200,000 per facility.

"There is much in the standard that is questionable," explains Wendy Lechner, PIA's senior director for federal employment policy. "A recently released study by the National Academy of Sciences confirmed that so little is known about the cause and effect of many ergonomic injuries that employers simply cannot know how many repetitions or how much weight, for instance, is too much."

She adds, "As a result, employers would have had to purchase expensive automation equipment and institute procedures that would hurt productivity, with no certainty that there would be fewer or less severe injuries. On top of that, the penalties for failing to properly implement the standard could have been tens of thousands of dollars."