It looks like the current administration is trying to clean the mess left by Clinton. OSHA thinks Congress is making a mistake

-- Maria (maria947@hotmail.com), March 07, 2001

Answers

"Clean house"? How about "screw workers"? Have you ever suffered a repetitive motion injury assinine Maria? I have. They are not simple, easy to heal, or fun to treat.

Every year, over 600,000 US workers suffer painful repetitive strain and back injuries on the job---64 percent of these are women-- "compassionate" Maria. If the House votes to overturn OSHA, not only will workplaces no longer be required to enforce safety measures for workers, but any regulations similar to OSHA will be prevented in the future. The OSHA ergonomics standard would cover 102 million workers, and would primarily affect women, who represent 64 percent of repetitive motion injuries that result in lost work time. OSHA also estimates that it would prevent 4.6 million muscoloskeletal disorders per year and would save businesses $9.1 billion annually in the first 10 years.

Republicans and big business interest groups argued that the measure was “too costly.” The standard would have required employers to redesign workplaces and compensate workers for injuries resulting from repetitive motion. Employers would also be required to train workers, find and fix job hazards and provide medical evaluations to injured workers.

What's so harmful about that? The only thing it harms is the fat cats. Meanwhile, workers -- mostly women -- suffer.

You make me literally sick, "compassionate" Maria. Go "help" some injured worker out of your own wallet, mean-spirted miser.

You call yourself a "woman"? You're something quite different, like all the GOP assholes who want to screw the poor and the laboring every way they can.

-- Clean Your Own House (greedy@one.com), March 07, 2001.

Wow, mellow out dude!!! Maybe we need new OSHA rules to deal with vulgarity. My wife had a repetitive injury but she certainly does not agree with these overbearing rules that would cost billions. People have a right to disagree without somebody yelling profanities. Unless of course all you have is an elementary school education, then it's probably the only way you can communicate.

-- less nasty (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), March 07, 2001.

What's truly nasty, "less nasty," is screwing the poor at the expense of the rich. If the word "asshole" offends your special sensibilities, run off to a church board.

Why would anybody reasonable want to make life harder for people at the bottom of the barrel, people who work the jobs that made profits attractive for big business, jobs so lousy that even big business has become embarrassed by them?

You tell me. "Nasty" finds expression not in words, but in actions, and by defending this attack on poor working people your heart is as meanspirted -- as "compassionate" -- as that of our GOP mistress Maria.

-- Greed is Nasty (look@yourself.com), March 07, 2001.

Greed and your other handle, Thanks, just call me Cruela as Anita has.

Have you ever suffered a repetitive motion injury assinine Maria? Yes I have. I spent months figuring it out and wrapped my wrist. Never visited a doctor though, I thought that would be a waste of time. After trying various "fixes" found that a simple adjustment of my chair finally remedied the problem.

What's truly nasty, "less nasty," is screwing the poor at the expense of the rich. How does this screw the poor? Who says that repetitive motion only afflicts the poor? Where's that study? And please while you're at it, define poor and the possible jobs the poor would have with repetitive motion.

The standard would have required employers to redesign workplaces and compensate workers for injuries resulting from repetitive motion. I find lots of things wrong with this. IMO, a realistic measure would be to require new businesses to comply, and "grandfather" those currently operational. For a company to redesign an assembly line would firstly require a complete shutdown. The company would need to go through the process to come up with the redesign, (and if don't the right way) prototype the redesign to see if the required improvements were actually made, and then tear down the old and put the new in place. Doesn't sound like an easy thing to me BUT of course to "help the poor" well worth every penny.

Second, compensation for injuries must be justified. How do you (oh great defender of the poor working class) prevent fraud, waste and abuse? The company now needs to plan for this compensation, making sure that legitimate claims are filed appropriately and increase the benefits paid out. Increase in benefits means a reduction someplace else. Do you actually think that the businesses can pay out more in benefits without it impacting their bottom line? Of course not. And who pays the bottom line? You and me. For if the bottom line gets too small, the business goes away and you and I are out of a job.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), March 07, 2001.

-- clean up (nasty@tags.for.bold), March 07, 2001.

'repetitive motion injury’

I once threw out my back having excessive and repetitive sex with my favorite gal. You mean I could get some free bucks for that? Democrats that hold elected public office are famous for ‘jerking- off’ on the job. Any benefits for them? Yes, it is time for al of the bullshit give-a-way programs to go the way of Al Gore…just disappear.

-- So (cr@t.es), March 07, 2001.

Let me see if I get this straight. You spent months trying to figure out why your wrist was sore. You wore a wrap, but the injury wasn't severe enough to visit a doctor (you thought it would be "a waste of time"). Ultimately the problem was solved by adjusting your chair.

And you call this an "injury"? Who do you think you're kidding?

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), March 07, 2001.

Yeah, screw the poor, that's the ticket!!!! Nobody is taking anything away from the "poor and disenfranchised women", these are brand new regs - thousands of pages of them.

Maybe we should require rubber sidewalks instead of cement. I could come up with 'estimates' that would show that would save thousands of injuries also. But a bureaucrat can always come up with new laws and regulations to maintain their purpose in the greta cog of the federal government; and bleeding-heart liberals will scream class warfare diatribe against anyone that disagrees with them (with or without the truth to back them up).

-- less and less nasty (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), March 07, 2001.

Health problems such as carpal tunnel syndrome would be covered

Tar, too funny but glad to see you see my point.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), March 07, 2001.

Oh man. You really are a moron, aren't you?

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), March 07, 2001.

For Maria the Maroon, psst, turn on your sound.

-- (that's@ll.folks), March 07, 2001.

I'm sure hemmorhoids would be covered as a repetitive stress injury for those repetitively sitting too long!!!

-- additional coverage (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), March 07, 2001.

Tar, thanks, that's about what I think of you too.

Andy is that you?

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), March 07, 2001.

Guess my aunt should have adjusted her chair, then she wouldn't have had to get surgery in both wrists last month.

Oh, wait, did I forget to say that my aunt doesn't work in an office? She's 62, and has been retired for four years. She and her husband work on their 70-acre farm. OSHA wouldn't have helped her, but RSI is a lot more serious than a misadjusted office chair. And it affects more people than just cube dwellers.

Try again, Maria.

-- Already Done Happened (oh.yeah@it.did.com), March 07, 2001.

Has anyone ever heard of "bean counter blindness"? The bean counters know everything that's spent, right to the penny. But they simply cannot count the value of everything that did not get done because of dollars saved. So they can't see any loss at all when the top people go to work for the competitor (for more money). They only see the money saved by not hiring them. They can't see what isn't produced by all the people standing in line to use the one and only widget, but they can see the cost of buying another widget. And so on ad infinitum.

Well, bean counter blindness is more generalized than that. The real goal is efficiency, to get the most possible of value per dollar spent. Maria is trying very hard to say that worker protection at some point costs more than it is worth - that is, costs EVERYONE, because the economy becomes less efficient and this hurts us all. Some amount of protection is definitely worthwhile. There can be too little, there can be too much. Now, have we gone too far in the direction of too much or not?

Most of the knee-jerks on this thread can't see past the end of their own noses. The relationship between an efficient economy and even *having* a job to get hurt on totally escapes them. They never think to wonder what the so-called fat cats actually *do* with their money. Like maybe, invest in a company that puts you to work, or lowers you prices, or creates new and worthwhile products. Even if the fat cats do nothing but eat expensive food, this keeps cooks and waiters and busboys employed, as well as farmers and builders and plumbers and electricians and...

Ah well, good thing smarter people make the decisions that count.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 07, 2001.

Au contraire, Flint. I think Maria is arguing against most, if not ALL OSHA regulations. Maria has said before that she owns a construction outfit, and she has derided worker protections in the past. Probably because she's had to pay out before.

And didn't Tarzan ask you on another thread if you would present examples of OSHA laws that have cost millions (or billions?) of dollars per lives saved. Perhaps you responded to Tarzan's request, but if so, I never saw it. Kindly indulge me and post that info here for us.

"Most of the knee-jerks on this thread can't see past the end of their own noses. The relationship between an efficient economy and even *having* a job to get hurt on totally escapes them."

So if you have a job, be thankful, collect your paycheck and keep your yap shut if you get hurt. Right?

They never think to wonder what the so-called fat cats actually *do* with their money. Like maybe, invest in a company that puts you to work, or lowers you prices, or creates new and worthwhile products.

Or causes work-related injuries. What's a little blood or RSI, so long as the investors are making money?

"Even if the fat cats do nothing but eat expensive food, this keeps cooks and waiters and busboys employed, as well as farmers and builders and plumbers and electricians and...

Careful, Flint. It's thinking like that which gave us the Soviet Union. Not like I think that's a good idea, but unrestrained capitalism isn't so pretty, either.

"Ah well, good thing smarter people make the decisions that count."

You wouldn't be referring to our most recent Potato-Head Presidents, would you? Smarter than what? A sack of carrots?

-- Already Done Happened (oh.yeah@it.did.com), March 07, 2001.

Already:

What I'm trying to say is that there really are complex tradeoffs here, and that resources put into protecting people from job-related injuries are therefore NOT put into ANYTHING else. The general question is, by what mechanism should resources be allocated? Conservatives tend to favor the free market (and accept a certain level of abuses), while liberals tend to favor rules and regulations (and accept a certain level of inefficiency as well as abuses). But it seems clear to me that tradeoffs must (and always are) determined by some mechanism. The claim that everyone who suffers an injury should always be compensated by someone else, regardless of how indirect the causality, and without limit, is short-sighted.

The more specific question is, for any particular OSHA regulation, what is the *real, total* cost of that regulation, and how should that cost be evaluated.

It's not difficult to count up the money spent compensating the injured, and compensating the regulators, and compensating the insurance companies, and purchasing any necessary goods. But this is why I spoke of the bean counters' blindness. How much is really cost due to (for some examples) production foregone for fear of injuries, people not hired with the money spent compensating the injured, cost of retaining law firms to defend against fraudulent claims, inferior (and perhaps even less safe!) products because the money for compensation has to come from somewhere, people not hired due to sales lost due to higher prices due to OSHA regulations, and so on and on and on?

Now, those who claim (essentially) that ANY amount spent in direct costs is worthwhile, tend to look only at direct costs. Those who would prefer to maintain dangerous conditions and dump anyone who gets injured without notice will dig up every indirect cost they can find, resulting in (IMO) exaggerated numbers. After all, nothing is a *pure* inefficiency (as I tried to illustrated with the fat cat).

I'm not even making the claim that OSHA regulations have become excessive, because I don't know enough details, and because the word "excessive" is too value-laden. But I DO take the nominative position that there is an amount of safety where efficiency is maximized, and that the economy is less efficient if we impose either more OR less than that amount. Any claim that we are beyond that amount should not be dismissed out of hand.

And beyond this is the issue of whether we are getting our money's worth. Can the same amount (or more) safety be had by more efficient means, and therefore fewer dollars? What do you think?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 07, 2001.

Flint --

"What I'm trying to say is that there really are complex tradeoffs here, and that resources put into protecting people from job-related injuries are therefore NOT put into ANYTHING else."

You made your point the first time round. I received your message just fine. You seem to be missing the opposing point, though.

"The general question is, by what mechanism should resources be allocated?"

I don't think that's the general question, unless we're giving it different names. I'd like to know how much productivity outweighs preventable injuries. What value of productivity can be equated to one preventable death? How many crippled or maimed limbs are acceptable if we increase gross productivity by $1M per year?

"The claim that everyone who suffers an injury should always be compensated by someone else, regardless of how indirect the causality, and without limit, is short-sighted."

Who made that claim? Sounds like a straw man, and I know you're better than that, Mr. Flint.

"The more specific question is, for any particular OSHA regulation, what is the *real, total* cost of that regulation, and how should that cost be evaluated."

Yes. You claimed to have data on that on another thread, but now you're backing away from that claim. Please present your data for us.

"It's not difficult to count up the money spent compensating the injured, and compensating the regulators, and compensating the insurance companies, and purchasing any necessary goods."

Obviously it is quite difficult. Otherwise, you could do that for us.

"But this is why I spoke of the bean counters' blindness. How much is really cost due to (for some examples) production foregone for fear of injuries, people not hired with the money spent compensating the injured, cost of retaining law firms to defend against fraudulent claims, inferior (and perhaps even less safe!) products because the money for compensation has to come from somewhere, people not hired due to sales lost due to higher prices due to OSHA regulations, and so on and on and on?

Mr. Flint, I don't mean to be flippant when I say this, but life is hard. Humans aren't guaranteed easy lives, and corporations aren't, either. I don't want to see any jobs lost, opportunities missed or money wasted, but I want EVEN LESS to see workers needlessly injured or killed because the safety expenditures that would have saved them were deemed "too expensive." Humans grow old, get sick and die. That's life. And companies get sick and die, too. That's business.

"I'm not even making the claim that OSHA regulations have become excessive, because I don't know enough details, and because the word "excessive" is too value-laden."

Hmm. I thought you did exactly that on an earlier thread. Am I mistaken?

"But I DO take the nominative position that there is an amount of safety where efficiency is maximized, and that the economy is less efficient if we impose either more OR less than that amount. Any claim that we are beyond that amount should not be dismissed out of hand."

Sounds like a bean-counter argument to me. I don't think that this min-max game has anything to recommend it. You seem to suggest that production can and should be balanced against injuries and lives. If I were running a widget factory, I'd certainly sacrifice some production in order to avoid sacrificing limbs and lives.

"And beyond this is the issue of whether we are getting our money's worth."

Perhaps you should ask that question of workers in general.

"Can the same amount (or more) safety be had by more efficient means, and therefore fewer dollars? What do you think?"

Possibly. But it seems a cold calculation, more suited to bean- counters than to human beings.

-- Already Done Happened (oh.yeah@it.did.com), March 07, 2001.

Already:

I'm not sure if you're contradicting yourself or not. You seem to be taking the position that any job-related injury or death that could have been prevented, *should* have been prevented, regardless of the cost of prevention. Essentially, you seem to be saying that no cost is too high to pay for safety, if safety can in fact be bought at ANY price.

If this is what you really mean, than I must disagree. I don't think it's cold-hearted to balance safety against other values, such as cost, freedom, pleasure, and others. To do so meaningfully, we need a common denominator, and in our economy that is money. This means we must put a price on a life, and that price cannot be infinite.

For example, highway designers know from experience how many fatalities a given intersection design will experience. Typically, the more expensive the design, the fewer casualties. They have a limited highway budget, and extra money here means less money there. They literally have a price on human life (comes to somewhere between $4-5 thousand, I believe, for intersections). Refusing to recognize such facts of life because they seem cold isn't rational. Nor did I say there was anything bad about bean-counting. I was criticizing the *blindness*, not the math. Not all bean counters are blind.

I can't believe you are joining the crowd here, of people who want their cake and eat it too, who want all their lunches to be free. These people seem to believe that safety costs nothing, and that evil capitalists are conspiring to injury or kill their employees out of sheer short-sighted greed. Surely if you don't think we're spending enough on safety, you can suggest what we should forego to afford that safety. Higher taxes? Higher prices? Lower quality of goods? Higher unemployment? Which are you recommending?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 07, 2001.

On Knitting

-- (MollyIvins@Star.Telegram), March 07, 2001.

Molly, since knitting is a form of masturbation, should OSHA develop specs for safe hand-jobs?

-- (nemesis@awol.com), March 07, 2001.

Oh, so Maria owns a construction outfit. That explains everything -- her greed and her callous attitude toward workers.

-- Maria's Greedy Capitalism (screws@workers.com), March 07, 2001.

Comrade Stalin loved his workers.

-- (LeonTrotsky@gulag.archipelago), March 07, 2001.

"Already: I'm not sure if you're contradicting yourself or not. You seem to be taking the position that any job-related injury or death that could have been prevented, *should* have been prevented, regardless of the cost of prevention."

Uh, uh, uh, Mr. Flint. Never said that. Not at all. I asked YOU to tell me how much lives and limbs were worth in terms of production. You haven't done so, and you haven't presented the OSHA data I've asked for. I sense a dodge in progress.

You know, Mr. Flint, I used to have respect for you, but after meeting you on the last couple of threads, I'm rapidly losing that respect.

"Essentially, you seem to be saying that no cost is too high to pay for safety, if safety can in fact be bought at ANY price."

Didn't say that. However, you did appear to be saying that productivity must be balanced with lives and limbs. Was I mistaken in that? I asked you some questions. In response, you failed to answer those questions, set them up as straw men and stood them in front of me. Can I get a straight answer from you on anything?

"If this is what you really mean, than I must disagree. I don't think it's cold-hearted to balance safety against other values, such as cost, freedom, pleasure, and others."

Oh. I see. Last night, we were only talking about the financial cost of saved lives and limbs. Now saving lives costs us in terms of freedom, pleasure and Other Nice Things To Be Named Later. Come back to Earth, Mr. Flint.

"To do so meaningfully, we need a common denominator, and in our economy that is money. This means we must put a price on a life, and that price cannot be infinite."

I know that. That's why I asked you to quantify that price last night. Not up to the task, Mr. Flint?

"For example, highway designers know from experience how many fatalities a given intersection design will experience. Typically, the more expensive the design, the fewer casualties. They have a limited highway budget, and extra money here means less money there. They literally have a price on human life (comes to somewhere between $4-5 thousand, I believe, for intersections)."

Ah. Now we have a price per life. Do you agree with their assessment?

"Refusing to recognize such facts of life because they seem cold isn't rational."

I don't refuse to accept them. I do, however, refuse to confine my THINKING to that particular box.

"Nor did I say there was anything bad about bean-counting. I was criticizing the *blindness*, not the math. Not all bean counters are blind."

Then count some beans for us with your eyes uncovered, Mr. Flint. Give us the OSHA data and your assessment of the value of lives and limbs. Come on.

"I can't believe you are joining the crowd here, of people who want their cake and eat it too, who want all their lunches to be free."

Then don't believe it. I'm not in that crowd. Take your straw man out to lunch. Maybe you can stick him with the check.

"These people seem to believe that safety costs nothing, and that evil capitalists are conspiring to injury or kill their employees out of sheer short-sighted greed."

You can't possibly believe that such injuries and deaths never happen, can you?

"Surely if you don't think we're spending enough on safety,"

Didn't say that. Mr. Flint, please come out of the hayfield. It's getting quite crowded out there with all those straw men standing around.

"you can suggest what we should forego to afford that safety. Higher taxes? Higher prices? Lower quality of goods? Higher unemployment? Which are you recommending?"

Mr. Flint, I shall answer your questions as soon as you answer mine.

-- Already Done Happened (oh.yeah@it.did.com), March 08, 2001.

Tar, thanks, that's about what I think of you too.

Coming from you, my dear, that's a complement.

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), March 08, 2001.

Already, nice try on your intrepretaion of what I'm arguing... "ALL OSHA regulations". On the other thread I was complaining about an arm of OSHA for worker's rights in poor nations. How that translates to ALL OSHA regulations I'll never know! Yeah, I can picture it now, OSHA requiring hard hats and hand rails in poor nations. Too funny.

BTW I asked for a study that shows these regulations are proven to be helpful. Never saw it.

The point that Tar obviously missed was the FWA. These broad regualtions leave lots of room for it.

Flint, I doubt people want to see the broader picture or maybe they just like to argue. Thanks for trying to explain it.

"Oh, so Maria owns a construction outfit. That explains everything -- her greed and her callous attitude toward workers. " Now that's funny!

"Molly, since knitting is a form of masturbation, should OSHA develop specs for safe hand-jobs? " What about mental masturbation (as in the above quote)? How would OSHA protect this workers from that?

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), March 08, 2001.

people who want their cake and eat it too, who want all their lunches to be free. These people seem to believe that safety costs nothing, and that evil capitalists are conspiring to injury or kill their employees out of sheer short-sighted greed. Surely if you don't think we're spending enough on safety, you can suggest what we should forego to afford that safety. Higher taxes? Higher prices? Lower quality of goods? Higher unemployment? Which are you recommending?

Here is another case of the pendulum swinging to the extremes of both sides. There was a time when the safety of workers was not considered by the owners, back in the sweatshop days early in the history of this country. There was a fire in one sweatshop in New York that brought the plight to the public. Safety measures were implemented, fire exits, ventilation, age restrictions along with maximum working hours allowed. There were necessary changes needed out of basic humanity considerations.
BUT..Ahh..as which happens in so many cases, the laws and changes that were meant for the public good can and do get taken to extremes which distort the original intent. Unions are a good example of this happening, they were great for bringing changes to the workplace, forcing fair wages and worker safety improvements.

But alas, an attitude developed guided by greed, where unions asked for realistic cost of living raises, but give them an inch and they want a mile mentality took over and unrealistic demands became to be made. Job security turned into demands that a worker could not be fired short of committing murder. It got to the point that employers were forced to retain incompetent workers, raises were given to workers who did not earn them, promotions were required when not deserved and no position existed for, causing a glut of over paid middle managers confirming the existence of the peter principle.

Teachers unions have contributed to the lowering of educational standards due mainly in part to the fact that it is almost impossible to fire a bad teacher.

When the systems that have been put in place to protect the basic rights of workers end up forcing employers to keep incompetent and downright lazy workers then it is time to change the laws. There has to be a happy medium put in place. Going to extremes for the workers harms everyone involved, other workers, employers and consumers. But we should not over react and go backwards either, allowing the positive gains that have been made to be lost. Reasonable workers rights need to be protected without giving them a free rein to abuse those rights to the detriment of all involved.

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), March 08, 2001.

"Already, nice try on your intrepretaion of what I'm arguing... "ALL OSHA regulations".

Maria, I was arguing with Mr. Flint, not you. In any event, please include the context of what I said.

>>>"Au contraire, Flint. I think Maria is arguing against most, if not ALL OSHA regulations."

Not necessarily all, but possibly all. And I said "I think," not "Maria is." If you disagree or think I have misrepresented you, then engage me in discourse, and prove me wrong. Selective quoting won't help you any.

"On the other thread I was complaining about an arm of OSHA for worker's rights in poor nations. How that translates to ALL OSHA regulations I'll never know!"

Um, Maria, I confined my comments to what you said on THIS thread. How my comments on this thread translate to all threads, I'll never know.

"Yeah, I can picture it now, OSHA requiring hard hats and hand rails in poor nations. Too funny."

I don't see why OSHA should be fooling around in the affairs of other nations. If a company sets up shop in a poor nation, then worker safety should be on the authorities there, not here in the US. Perhaps you can explain to me why OSHA should be nosing around workplaces in other nations? I certainly can't see why.

"BTW I asked for a study that shows these regulations are proven to be helpful. Never saw it."

Considering that the assertions on this thread have been "OSHA bad, get rid of OSHA," perhaps YOU could present some evidence to support your claim, rather than demanding that other people present evidence to support their opposition. You argue like Ain't, Maria.

"The point that Tar obviously missed was the FWA. These broad regualtions leave lots of room for it."

Please elucidate. Perhaps you are on to something here. Then again, perhaps not, but I'd like to see you go farther with this.

"Flint, I doubt people want to see the broader picture or maybe they just like to argue."

That's odd. I was going to say the same thing about you, Maria.

"Thanks for trying to explain it."

Tried, didn't succeed. Care to take a crack at it yourself, Maria?

-- Already Done Happened (oh.yeah@it.did.com), March 08, 2001.

Already-

Maria said, "On the other thread I was complaining about an arm of OSHA for worker's rights in poor nations. How that translates to ALL OSHA regulations I'll never know!"

Here's the original thread. You'll find one sentence in which Maria complains about "funding labor rights in poor countries" and plenty in which she shrieks about OSHA in general (not foreign funding in specific), including this gem:

Who pays for businesses to have "safer" work places? Actually I should ask who pays for businesses to install useless OSHA compliant policies?

It is only now, a week after the fact, that Maria is pretending she was complaining about OSHA funds being used in other countries. The irony is that the document under discussion never actually mentions OSHA in relation to foreign funds. Here's what it says:

Clinton-Gore recently proposed to help fund a new arm of the International Labor Organization that would strengthen the labor rights of workers in poor nations.

How this translates into OSHA, I don't know. Maria was the only one on the thread who brought it up, albeit in passing.

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), March 08, 2001.

Already, sorry, thought you had been on the other thread too.

My point on FWA: when regulations are general, not very specific, it leaves room to interpret to your liking. Any worker can claim distress from repetitive motion (such as I "did") and reaps the benefits. (BTW, I went to a doctor years earlier for the same problem and he told me it *was* carpal tunnel, so I did have a "case") These cases are hard to prove or disprove. Distress comes in many forms, hence the vulnerability to fraud. And who loses with fraud. You and me.

As an example, I never understood why people want to "beat" the insurance companies. The pretend to have whiplash or some other ailment to get money. Well, do you really think the insurance companies lose in this deal? No, they just jack up the rates and you and I pay for this jerk's "injury".

If the government is going to require that businesses put out, then they need to study the problem and *prove* that indeed these regulations will save lives. Where's the proof? I don't oppose safety in the workplace. I'd just like to see that the proposed changes required by OSHA do in fact increase safety.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), March 08, 2001.

Already:

We seem to be talking at cross purposes here. My intent is to discuss safety regulations within the general context of resource allocation decisions, when resources are too scarce to achieve every desirable goal and tradeoffs must be made. Your intent has been to mock people, ask leading questions so you can criticize me either for my answers or lack of same, deny you've said everything you've implied however strongly, and pat yourself on the back for scoring points. If this is how you wish to conduct yourself, fine. Meanwhile I'll continue to discuss the topic, and I invite you to join in as soon as you feel you've "won" the discussion and need no longer act like a jerk.

I believe Cherri is correct, that safety (like anything else we consider a worthy goal) is cyclical, and works like a pendulum. The process of allocating resources for safety is political, always assuming that voters have a general sense of when the pendulum has swung too far in either direction -- toward insufficient safety and worker abuse, or toward too much safety, where excessive and expensive chikenshit rules are preventing the job from getting done. Our policy direction changes when we reach the point where enough voters feel strongly enough that we've gone too far (in either direction) so as to make a political difference.

Explicit dollar values are placed on life and limb by insurance policies. We know what we're spending, and what we get for it. We can choose to purchase as much insurance as we wish. We don't spend every available penny on insurance, because we recognize that we have many other uses for our money, and not enough money to fully satisfy all of them. OSHA regulations are like a national health insurance policy, in that we pay (in many ways) for safety, and the more we pay, the more safety we get. AND, the less of other things we get as a result.

With safety as with many other goals, there is a point of diminishing returns, where increasing marginal safety costs too much for the extra safety achieved. For each dollar, we get less safety than the last dollar bought. So we have two questions: (1) Where is this point, in theory; and (2) How can we tell when we've reached it? And I belive the answers to both questions are determined procedurally.

Personally, I feel we are very near the limit on the side of excessive regulation and cost. This does NOT mean I want corporations to run roughshod over the interests of their employees, chaining children to machines inside firetraps. I'd like a middle ground, and too many contributors to this thread seem (to me) to believe that if one doesn't wish one extreme, one necessarily wishes the other.

No matter how obviously excessive our efforts toward safety might become, there will always be injuries. I don't consider it reasonable to point to these inevitable injuries as a justification for spending even more trying to prevent every possible problem. Especially, I don't consider it reasonable to pretend that additional safety is "free", just pass more laws and it happens automagically. Overall economic context must be considered.

And maybe I'm wrong, and we are still at a point where real safety improvements can be made with little extra cost. Certainly it's worth looking closely at jobs where repetitive motion injuries are common, to see if these injuries can be prevented while the job still gets done adequately. Maybe such jobs are excellent candidates for automation?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 08, 2001.

"Already, sorry, thought you had been on the other thread too."

Not a problem. Thanks for the clarification.

"My point on FWA:"

Please point me to some information on "FWA." I am not informed on this matter, and you do not appear to address anything called FWA in the thread that Tarzan linked us to.

"when regulations are general, not very specific, it leaves room to interpret to your liking."

This is the case in all areas of human endeavor. Why should disability be any different? There are people playing fast and loose and committing fraud in all sorts of ways. Should we then slam OSHA down because there MIGHT be abuse? I don't think that companies should bankrupt themselves to protect worker lives, but neither do I think that we should get rid of OSHA because there MIGHT be regulatory abuse going on.

"Any worker can claim distress from repetitive motion (such as I "did") and reaps the benefits. (BTW, I went to a doctor years earlier for the same problem and he told me it *was* carpal tunnel, so I did have a "case") These cases are hard to prove or disprove."

You had a "case," but you might not have had a compensable case. That requires a higher standard of proof. I have a service-connected hearing loss, and am therefore a disabled veteran. However, since my hearing loss is correctable with surgery, the Veteran's Administration rated me as a zero-percent disabled vet. That's their way of saying "okay, it's service-connected, so we'll pay to treat it and fix it, but we won't give you a pension." Fine with me. I can work just fine, but I do think that the government owes me a repair job for the hearing loss I suffered while I was working for them.

Other workers deserve the same. If you incur injury or death on the job due to employer neglect, then the employer should have to cough up. It doesn't take a genius to recognize (in most cases) where unsafe conditions exist, and there's nothing preventing a company from EXCEEDING OSHA requirements. In fact, some insurance companies will send you a risk assessment team that will look over your operation and see if there are ways to improve safety in the workplace. Companies that do this can often get a reduction in their insurance premiums.

Hmm. Increased safety leading to reduced insurance rates, which means more money to invest in workers or equipment? Boy! Mr. Flint should sure like that!

"Distress comes in many forms, hence the vulnerability to fraud. And who loses with fraud. You and me."

Fraud happens. We should ferret it out and prosecute it vigorously, but the mere existence of fraud is a lame argument for terminating a program in which fraud occurs.

"As an example, I never understood why people want to "beat" the insurance companies. The pretend to have whiplash or some other ailment to get money. Well, do you really think the insurance companies lose in this deal? No, they just jack up the rates and you and I pay for this jerk's "injury".

How many egregious examples of "beating" insurance companies can you present? Do you honestly think that insurance companies will part with a dime more in claims than they absolutely HAVE to pay out? Insurance companies are historically very assiduous in retaining their funds, and take a dim view of fraud. Are you going to claim that there are hordes of scam artists out there, beating the honest, upstanding small insurance shops like Aetna and Citi over the head with their well-planned and well-executed fraud schemes?

Come on, Maria. SHOW me.

"If the government is going to require that businesses put out, then they need to study the problem and *prove* that indeed these regulations will save lives."

I believe the government HAS conducted such studies. I imagine we could get copies of those studies from the Feds if we simply asked for them.

"Where's the proof?"

Okay, Maria. You pick an OSHA regulation you don't like, and I'll go to the well to get the reasons for it.

"I don't oppose safety in the workplace. I'd just like to see that the proposed changes required by OSHA do in fact increase safety."

Maria, I think you could do that for yourself, but you seem to be demanding that someone prove it to you. I'm not interested in arguing with you about it, but if you will pick an OSHA regulation, then I will see if I can get a response from the government on why that regulation exists. Fair enough?

-- Already Done Happened (oh.yeah@it.did.com), March 08, 2001.

"Already: We seem to be talking at cross purposes here."

Yes. I asked you to answer some questions for us, and you keep avoiding them.

"My intent is to discuss safety regulations within the general context of resource allocation decisions, when resources are too scarce to achieve every desirable goal and tradeoffs must be made."

Maybe. But you won't answer some very elementary questions about your position, and instead insist that I answer YOUR questions. You first, Mr. Flint.

"Your intent has been to mock people, ask leading questions so you can criticize me either for my answers or lack of same, deny you've said everything you've implied however strongly, and pat yourself on the back for scoring points."

Well fuck you, you pompous, arrogant ass. You first post on this thread mocked people. Remember this?

"Most of the knee-jerks on this thread can't see past the end of their own noses. The relationship between an efficient economy and even *having* a job to get hurt on totally escapes them. They never think to wonder what the so-called fat cats actually *do* with their money. Like maybe, invest in a company that puts you to work, or lowers you prices, or creates new and worthwhile products."

And this?

"Ah well, good thing smarter people make the decisions that count."

You have been asking a few leading questions of your own, Mr. Flint.

"Surely if you don't think we're spending enough on safety, you can suggest what we should forego to afford that safety. Higher taxes? Higher prices? Lower quality of goods? Higher unemployment? Which are you recommending?"

Leading question, Mr. Flint. You assume that I want MORE MONEY SPENT, and then ask me where that money will come from. To be sure, I think that workplace safety is a good thing, but you seem a little confused about how workplace safety is funded. Do you honestly think that higher taxes are a necessary concomitant of increased workplace safety? Get real.

As far as asking you leading questions goes, Mr. Flint, I am most interested in getting answers to the following: What OSHA regulation (s) has a per-life-saved cost of one billion dollars? What should be the assessed value of a life or a limb (you can differentiate between arms and legs, if you want)?

I will criticize you for your lack of answers, Mr. Flint, and you can just deal with it. If you make a claim that I find outrageous, I am going to demand proof, and I'm going to do so forcefully. If that bothers you, then that's too fucking bad.

Deny what I've "implied rather strongly?" Don't make me laugh, Mr. Flint. If you want to know what I'm thinking or saying, you have but to ask me. But to insist that I DEFINITELY AM saying what you think I am saying is arrogant and foolish. Hell, Mr. Flint, in several of your posts in the last 24 hours, you say that I "seem to be saying." And now I am DEFINITELY saying those things?

Beat your head against the wall, Mr. Flint. Three times. Hard. Now please return to the discussion and try again.

And regarding back-patting and "scoring points," well, if it makes you feel better to think that, go ahead. There are only so many mistaken assumptions of yours that I can disabuse you of in a day.

"If this is how you wish to conduct yourself, fine."

That's right. It IS fine.

"Meanwhile I'll continue to discuss the topic,"

Meanwhile, you'll continue to avoid telling us which OSHA regulation costs one billion dollars per life saved. Tell us, Mr. Flint. Which one(s)?

"and I invite you to join in as soon as you feel you've "won" the discussion and need no longer act like a jerk."

I do not require your invitation to enter a thread I was already on. Further, I invite YOU to join in as soon as you feel you've "won" the discussion and need no longer act like a pompous ass.

"Explicit dollar values are placed on life and limb by insurance policies."

I want to know what YOU think the limits are. That's what I've been asking you. You seem to want to deflect that question onto other posters. Am I correct in that assumption?

"We know what we're spending, and what we get for it. We can choose to purchase as much insurance as we wish. We don't spend every available penny on insurance, because we recognize that we have many other uses for our money, and not enough money to fully satisfy all of them."

There is a distinct difference between workplace safety costs and life insurance, and I'm frankly amazed you are making this comparison. Workplace safety costs are aimed at preventing worker injuries and deaths. Life insurance simply pays off after someone dies. I do not think you would be so rash as to suggest lots and lots of life insurance would be equivalent to workplace safety. Would you?

"OSHA regulations are like a national health insurance policy, in that we pay (in many ways) for safety, and the more we pay, the more safety we get. AND, the less of other things we get as a result."

I would accept this as axiomatic. I don't believe anyone has disputed this. Why do you belabor it?

"With safety as with many other goals, there is a point of diminishing returns, where increasing marginal safety costs too much for the extra safety achieved. For each dollar, we get less safety than the last dollar bought. So we have two questions: (1) Where is this point, in theory; and (2) How can we tell when we've reached it? And I belive the answers to both questions are determined procedurally."

I cannot understand how, within any sort of procedural determination, one can assess where your point of diminishing returns lies unless one is prepared to place a dollar value on lives and limbs. How do you yourself assess the value of lives and limbs, Mr. Flint? What is their value?

"Personally, I feel we are very near the limit on the side of excessive regulation and cost."

Please explain how you came to this conclusion.

"This does NOT mean I want corporations to run roughshod over the interests of their employees, chaining children to machines inside firetraps. I'd like a middle ground, and too many contributors to this thread seem (to me) to believe that if one doesn't wish one extreme, one necessarily wishes the other."

Now who's "implying strongly?"

"No matter how obviously excessive our efforts toward safety might become, there will always be injuries."

The US military does not agree with you. Training deaths (i.e. non- combat) are considered totally avoidable, and a commander who has a troop die under his command better be able to demonstrate that it wasn't his oversight or mistake that led to the death. Such a policy has unfortunate side effects (viz. USS Iowa).

"I don't consider it reasonable to point to these inevitable injuries as a justification for spending even more trying to prevent every possible problem."

I don't care what industry or employer we're talking about. No employer has the right to expect that an employee (or the employee's family) should endure death or maiming on their own, simply because the company has complied with safe workplace regulations. I have never seen an employment contract that included an employer release in the event of employee death or maiming. Simply employing an individual does not in any wise release an employer for responsiblity for injuries suffered on the job. Employees have a reasonable expectation of a safe, non-hazardous work environment, and the burden of providing same falls on the employer.

Bottom line, Mr. Flint -- I think that companies should shoulder the financial burden of employee deaths and maimings, regardless of the level of workplace safety they put in place. Let the bean-counters play their min-max game and decide how much (if any) additional safety gear to put in place, but let them do it with the advance knowledge that they're potentially liable for accidental deaths and injuries in the workplace.

Call it the "Vegas Approach," Mr. Flint.

"Especially, I don't consider it reasonable to pretend that additional safety is "free", just pass more laws and it happens automagically. Overall economic context must be considered."

You seem here to imply that others on this thread hold this view. Implying strongly again?

"And maybe I'm wrong, and we are still at a point where real safety improvements can be made with little extra cost. Certainly it's worth looking closely at jobs where repetitive motion injuries are common, to see if these injuries can be prevented while the job still gets done adequately. Maybe such jobs are excellent candidates for automation?"

Maybe. I seem to recall that the poultry industry has a high incidence of RSI. Anyone here know anything about that?

-- Already Done Happened (oh.yeah@it.did.com), March 08, 2001.

Already,

Minus all this extravagant breast beating, I think we're homing on on something useful. I think you are exactly correct, that companies factor in (as well as they can) the cost of employee injury or death, and the cost of steps taken to minimize these things. If the cost of injury or death is low, there is little incentive to prevent it.

I don't think the military disagrees with me that injuries are unavoidable. Treating them as such is a policy position, NOT a statement of probability. Like saying that every swing of the bat should produce a hit, and if it doesn't we want to know why not. As a tool to reduce the incidence of injury (or increase the incidence of base hits), this can be an effective position to take.

And you also take the policy position that every employee should be able to expect safe working conditions, and that employees should be expected to provide them. Again, zero-tolerance is a potentially effective way to discover, understand, and avoid unnecessary or excessive risks.

The notion of imposing very large penalties for injury appeals to me, provided there are practical limits to culpability. In hindsight, every injury could be avoided by anyone who can see the future. Even the military (after investigation) finds that some training injuries defy all practical steps to avoid them.

So it might be worth experimenting with the idea that employers whose employees suffer injury or death bear the burden of proof that reasonably adequate preventive measures were taken. And if they were not, then exorbitant fines might be levied, for the bean-counters to factor into their equations. At some point, preventive measures have GOT to be less expensive than paying these fines.

This approach would allow the employer to determine adequate and effective safety measures without the burden of governmental micro- management of the workplace, with all the paperwork and bureaucracy and inefficiency that implies. It places a premium on *safety*, not on technical rule-following when the rules may contribute little to actual safety. So I like the "Vegas Approach".

I do not know the total cost of any specific safety regulation, nor do I think anyone can agree on what it might be. I remember reading somewhere (but I can't find it now) that some specific regulations cost in the vicinity of a billion dollars per prevented death. But I do know that those who impose the regulations estimate their cost as being FAR less than those imposed upon. I suppose whose estimate you prefer depends on where you sit. In the linked article, OSHA estimates compliance in this case costs of $4.5 billion/year, while businesses estimate $100 billion. This is a factor of 20. And if these rules prevent fewer than 4 more people dying of repetitive motion injury per year (OSHA), or fewer than 100 (business), then here is in fact a regulation costing over a billion per life saved.

Finally, please understand that I'm not trying to claim that safety is unimportant. It's not, it's extremely important. I believe our current approach to safety is designed to maximize bureaucracy rather than safety. The Vegas Approach to penalizing injury does away with this. In fact, I'd consider a system that penalized employers for employee injuries on a sliding scale depending on severity of injury, without ANY regard to the circumstances, to prevent lawyers from arguing degrees of relative fault. One side effect of this might be to rearrange price schedules, so that produces dangerous to produce (bridges? coal?) would cost correspondingly more. Might be interesting. What do you propose?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 08, 2001.

Flint: "And if they were not, then exorbitant fines might be levied, for the bean-counters to factor into their equations. At some point, preventive measures have GOT to be less expensive than paying these fines."

And would this solution not necessitate "due process"? And hearings? Findings of fact? In short, judicial proceedings? Leading to more employment for lawyers?

Am I speaking to the same Flint who used to post here?

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), March 08, 2001.

Nipper:

What would you suggest? I think this particular cure is at least better than the disease, though it clearly has problems of its own. That's why I suggested maybe we can do away with the finding of facts altogether. Simply say injury=Big Fine, regardless of how it happened. If it happened at work or was caused by work, pay the fine. Totally accidental or unavoidable? Too bad, pay the fine!

If you can find a better system, let's hear it. I like this idea because it decentralizes the decision making, lets companies focus on actual safety rather than following someone else's rules, cuts out thousands of unnecessary bureaucrats, and increases actual safety. To me, this sounds like a promising tradeoff.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 08, 2001.

Flint, I was just tugging at the ideological noose to see how much of your head was inside it. I've seen you express such utter disdain for judicial proceedings and lawyers that I suspected you might just jerk for the right stimulus. I am glad to see you did not.

So long as the fines were good and stiff, there might be some merit in externalizing the cost of injury so they could be explicitly compared to the cost of safety. The whole idea would require quite a bit of thinking-through before I'd be convinced it was better.

Not every industry has similar problems with safety. It might be workable take an actuarial approach to establish "true" costs of injuries in various industries. Then we should weight the size of the actual fines in favor of safety by increasing them by a fixed percentage over the "true" cost - a sort of built-in, guaranteed punitive premium in favor of minimizing injuries on the job.

AS always, the devil would be in the details.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), March 08, 2001.

The OSH Act was initiated in 1970 and has been the most convoluted piece of legislation to ever come out of Washington D.C. From the get go, this legislation has done more harm than good and only the Bible is close in the area of ‘multiple interpretations’. In it’s current form, OSHA is a bad joke that is choking the business community to death. Allowed to continue on it’s current path, OSHA will eliminate injury in the workplace all together……NO COMPANY WILL BE ABLE TO AFFORD TO CONTINUE TO OPERATE!

This should please the liberals to no end and then they can move on to another trauma, such as ‘Economic Meltdown’. We must remember that these evil corporate gnomes are responsible for keeping America at work. Of course, if you don’t work then pay no attention to my musings.

-- So (cr@t.es), March 08, 2001.