CONGRESS RESCINDS WORKPLACE SAFETY RULES

By: Todd Shields NAA Says Publishers Are Relieved


With two votes separated by less than 24 hours, Congress has rescinded far-
reaching workplace safety rules put in place in the closing weeks of the Clinton
administration.

The move pleases many newspaper publishers, who were opposed to the complex
ergonomics rules that resulted from 10 years of study by the federal government.

"We are delighted that Congress took the strong action that it did," said John
F. Sturm, president of the Newspaper Association of America, a membership group
that includes many daily newspapers. Sturm said the annulled regulations "would
have caused newspapers to spend an awful lot of money in this area."

The rules, promulgated in November by the Labor Department, were to take effect
in October.

They were eliminated on Republican-led votes in both houses of Congress. The
Senate voted 56-to-44 on Tuesday to kill the rules, and the House of
Representatives followed suit late Wednesday with a 223-to-206 vote.

Unions including The Newspaper Guild supported the rules, saying they would
prevent common injuries from lifting and other repetitive motions.

The Guild"s parent organization, the AFL-CIO, said a Congress "hostile to the
interests of working families rushed a naked political payoff to big business
contributors."

President Bush's Labor Department says it will examine whether to write less-
intrusive rules. Sturm said if the Labor Department takes up the topic, "we
expect the process to be better." Newspapers and other business groups said the
rules became dramatically more onerous in the final months of the 10-year study
period leading to their adoption.



Todd Shields (tshields@editorandpublisher.com) is the Washington editor for E&P.



Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher.