NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Scott Schneider, Center to Protect Workers' Rights
MR. SCHNEIDER: Welcome to our construction workshop. Thank you for coming. My name is Scott Schneider, and I am the Ergonomics Program Director for the Center to Protect Workers' Rights, which is part of the Building Trades Department of the AFL/CIO. And our project is funded from a cooperative agreement we have with NIOSH.
When I first started speaking about construction ergonomics about four years ago, people were confused. It seems strange to use both words in the same sentence. Ergonomics was thought of as a meat packing problem, a data entry problem, but nobody really thought about it in terms of the construction industry.
Now there are a lot of researchers studying construction ergonomics, and more and more contractors are getting involved. And the industry as a whole has become interested, and this is not surprising. Just as an indication, let me tell you in terms of the research going on, we have 49 presentations on construction ergonomics planned for the International Ergonomics Meeting coming up in June.
One of the reasons people are in it, as you can see from the slide, about 37 percent of all lost workday injuries in construction are sprain and strain injuries costing billions of dollars a year.
Secondly, you can see that if you look at the sprain and strain injury rates, by industry, construction has the highest rate of sprain and strain injuries of all industries other than transportation. In other words, your chances are about 1 out of 50 each year if you work in construction that you will lose work because of sprain and strain injury.
We know the risk factors that are present in construction which cause injuries: manual lifting, repetitive use of hand tools, working in awkward postures like overhead or at floor level, exposure to vibration, whole body and hand/arm, temperature extremes and fatigue from production pressures and the pace of the work.
And we also know what some of the solutions are: using material handling vehicles, carrying handles, changing work postures, using scissors lifts for overhead work, changing the design of tools and equipment, better work organization, ergonomic training of workers and supervisors and personal protective equipment. orkers and supervisors and personal protective equipment.
So the purpose of today's workshop is twofold; first to see what contractors have been doing to prevent sprain and strain injuries on their sites, and secondly, to look at how changes in the industry may have an impact on reducing sprains and strains.
We are going to start by hearing from two contractors or contractor representatives and then hear from a panel of workers and researchers about individual trades. We hope to keep the presentations short, about 10 or 15 minutes each, to leave about a half an hour for questions and discussions at the end. So please hold your questions, and we will make sure we get to them soon.
