NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Peg Seminario, AFL-CIO
MS. TAYLOR: Next, I'd like to introduce Margaret, commonly known as Peg Seminario. She is the Director of the Occupational Safety & Health for the AFL-CIO, where she's been soon 1977. Her responsibilities include handling their activities on safety and health and environmental matters.
Peg has worked extensively on a wide range of regulatory initiatives in OSHA and legislative initiatives on the Scientific Advisory Committee.
Please welcome Peg Seminario.
MS. SEMINARIO: Good morning. Thank you very much, Sandy.
I am happy to be here this morning on behalf of the AFL-CIO and the labor movement, to be part of this welcoming panel, to welcome all of you to this conference on Effective Workplace Practice and Programs for identifying and controlling ergonomic hazards.
Hank Lick, who is also on this panel, and myself, as members of NACOSH, the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, have been working with OSHA and NIOSH over the last number of months on this conference and providing advice and counsel on how it should be constructed and putting together a program that, with your help, will hopefully provide a base of information that will allow us to move forward on ergonomics problems in the workplace.
But, more importantly, I am very happy that so many of you are here. As you've heard, over 1000 people from business, from labor, from government, and from academia have come to participate in this conference, to share experiences, to learn from each other about the problems that we are facing with respect to ergonomics but, more importantly, the solutions that have been put in place to effectively deal with these hazards.
This is a very important meeting. As Sandy said, I have been with the AFL-CIO now 20 years, as hard as that is to believe, and I've been to a lot of NIOSH conferences, I've been to a lot of OSHA conferences and meetings. This, in my view, is perhaps the most important meeting, the most important conference that the government has called on workplace safety and health matters since OSHA and NIOSH began back in 1970.
As we heard from Linda and Greg, musculoskeletal disorders caused by work are, indeed, the most significant safety and health problems that we are facing today, causing serious injury to more than hundreds of thousands of workers every year, costing employers billions of dollars in workers' compensation costs. More importantly, causing workers tremendous pain, suffering, and disability.
The good news I think that we all have to focus on, however, is that, indeed, work is being done, has been done to address these problems. Employers are taking steps, in many cases in concert with their unions, in a joint effort, in identifying hazardous jobs, identifying workers who are at risk, instituting control measures, redesigning jobs, redesigning equipment and tools, and putting in place medical management for the early detection of these problems so disability doesn't occur.
There are training programs going on with workers involved in those efforts, where workers, employers, and unions are working jointly to address these problems.
So I think for this conference that what we should be focusing on is indeed those practices, what has been done to effectively deal with these problems, and this conference will provide a very important forum to do that.
This conference, hopefully, is important for another purpose. That is, indeed, to move the discussion and consideration about ergonomics, about work-related musculoskeletal disorders, out of the political arena and back to the safety and health arena where we can have a discussion, where we can have a debate about the issues that we are facing, and where we can come to agreement on solutions.
All of you who have worked on this issue, who are involved with this issue, are aware that ergonomics has been the subject of controversy and debate. Some in industry have questioned whether or not it is, indeed, a work-related problem.
Questions have been raised about the extent of the problem, whether there are indeed measures available to control the hazards, and that controversy has been played out in the political arena, most recently in the context of the 104th Congress.
For over a year there was a restriction in place, a rider on the OSHA appropriations measure, which prevented OSHA from moving forward and issuing proposed standards or issuing guidelines on ergonomic standards.
There were efforts made to broaden that prohibition, to prohibit the collection of data as well.
As of October 1st, 1996, that prohibition was lifted. There no longer is a limitation on OSHA's ability to move forward on this issue. That does not mean, however, as we all know, that there is not continuing controversy around this particular issue.
But despite the controversy, what has not stopped are efforts of employers, efforts of unions, efforts of safety and health professionals to move forward to address this issue.
What has not stopped are workers continuing to be exposed to the hazard and continuing to be put at risk.
We in the labor movement hope now, with the lifting of the rider on the OSHA appropriations measure, that we can get back to addressing the issue of ergonomics, addressing the issue of musculoskeletal disorders as a safety and health issue and not as a political issue.
That we can focus the discussion about measures to identify work-related musculoskeletal disorders and ergonomic hazards. That we can focus the discussion on effective measures to control these hazards.
This conference will help provide a forum to focus on the real problems and focus on real, effective solutions.
There is another conference which is being discussed and being planned now under the leadership of Hank Lick, by the American Automobile Manufacturers Association and the Center for Office Technology, to look at some of the science and policy issues around ergonomics. That conference is planned for later this year.
So, hopefully, with this conference, with that meeting, we will have forums where we can come together and talk about these problems. We can spend the next two days here learning from each other, listening to each other and use this as an opportunity to figure out how to move forward on this issue.
So I would again welcome everyone here and ask that we do spend the next two days listening to each other, learning from each other, and let's look at leaving this conference with a commitment, with a dedication, that 1997 will be the year that we in labor and management, we as a safety and health community, that we as a nation move forward together and make great strides to prevent workers from being hurt, disabled, and crippled by ergonomic hazards at work.
Thank you very much.
MS. TAYLOR: Thank you, Peg.
