NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Presentation by Angie Waldorf, North Carolina Department of Labor
MS. GIBSON: Our next speakers are actually a team of speakers. The first one is Angie Waldorf, who is with the North Carolina Department of Labor. She is the Assistant Deputy Commissioner for Occupational Safety and Health, and she is Chair of the Ergonomics Resource Center Advisory Board. She is an attorney. I told her it was risky saying that at a safety and health conference, but she said it was okay. She went to North Carolina State and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She worked 12 years with the American Petroleum Institute as an environmental attorney.
Angie.
MS. WALDORF: Thank you. I am Angie Waldorf. In addition to being an attorney, which I am sure there is no love lost, I am also in enforcement, among other things. I am probably one of the few speakers here that would get up and say that, but I am very comfortable with it because I think in North Carolina we have done what the rest of the country is struggling with. We sat down with all the parties, labor, industry, years ago and said, "This is a real problem and we need to address it."
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and I was trying to think of a way to capture the concept of ergonomics and ergonomic problems in a way that is very graphic and will grab people. I was thinking that a jelly fish reminded me of what it is like to work in this field. It is very hard to get your hands on, it is very slippery, and if you are not careful it will sting you.
In my position, I have the opportunity to look at a number of ergonomic problems and a number of industries. I have sat across the table with people that were adamantly convinced that buying back belts was an effective ergonomic program and protected their employees. They were very, very sincere in this belief so they got chairs for their employees and thought that this was an effective ergonomic program. I guess one of the take-home points that I want to make, and I was told that there would be a variety of people here from novices to very sophisticated, is that if you are in the beginning stages of this problem, make sure that you don't have the one-product-wonder-approach to ergonomics. When you realize that you have a problem, it is baffling.
From a regulatory point of view, it's like standing in the middle of a football field with all the lights on and looking for the exit. It is very hard to know how to start and how to proceed. So taking a deep breath and taking a reasoned and prioritized approach is very critical. That is exactly what we did in North Carolina four years ago. We felt we had a tiger by the tail. We had people that were becoming permanently disabled. We had poultry workers, textile workers at our doorstep saying, "What are you going to do?" We had cases stacking up and complaints stacking up, and we had a serious problem.
We really didn't know how serious the problem was. We were seeing the tip of the iceberg. But we sat down and said, "You know, this is an opportunity." Maybe an unprecedented opportunity because so little had been done that it was an open field. We did not have a lot of precedent sitting there that we had to deal with, so we took a fresh sheet of paper and said we were going to have a comprehensive approach and provide our citizens the type of protection and assistance they needed to solve this problem.
Typically, we came up with the carrot-and-stick approach. We decided that enforcement had to be a part of the solution. There are companies out there that just don't understand, but our enforcement was going to be different from what we had done in the past. We were not going to stop at the videotape and the OSHA 200 log. When we go in, we do massive symptom surveys, we talk to employees. In one company, out of 1,800 line workers, we interviewed 900.
We find out what is going on, and it is very helpful for us in analyzing the deficiencies in a program. We feel that our program evaluations are perhaps going to have a greater chance withstanding legal challenge than maybe some others. However, that was not our preferred approach, so we came up with alternatives that we say are our first opportunities, or give you the first bite of the apple, through the Ergonomic Resource Center, which I will talk about later, and our cooperative assessment program. Part of our enforcement action is to use specially trained members who have received graduate level training specifically in the area of ergonomics.
If you are new in this area and want to know if you have a problem, look at yourself in the mirror. Do you have a lot of recordables saying pain, wrist hurts, back hurts. Is there a lot of absenteeism in certain portions of your facility. What do your workers' compensation claims tell you? Will people leave your facility making $8 an hour to go work for somebody in a law office making $6 an hour? Is your productivity suffering in certain areas, and are people in pain?
Why implement an ergonomics program? When we were taking that comprehensive approach to ergonomics four years ago we said we were going to solve this problem because it was serious, one of the things that we did was to look at ourselves and we did our own research. We went to our workers' compensation data banks. We looked at the numbers, and what we found from our perspective was startling and scary.
For back related CTDs, the average workers' comp payout in North Carolina in 1994 was $16,881. The average lost work days were 138, and 92 percent of the cases were closed as disabling, meaning there was some permanent disability associated with the claim.
For carpal tunnel syndrome, the average payout was $13,920; 112 average number of lost work days; and 85 percent of the cases were classified as disabling. What our research has indicated is that fewer and fewer cases are being closed every year while more and more cases are being recorded. So you have these workers' compensation cases that are going on for years and the price tag keeps going up.
If money is not an incentive for you to implement an ergonomic program that is effective, may I encourage you to think about the indirect costs that you are suffering: lost productivity, recruitment, training, management time, and those all important legal fees. We project that 60 percent of the total cost of an ergonomic program to your company, and it doesn't matter if you are a government entity because we have cited government entities before in North Carolina, or a private employer, are indirect costs. So what you write on your check is only a portion of what it costs.
What are the ingredients of a successful program? You are going to see this over and over and over again. I am convinced after my years of on-the-job training in this field that you have to have everyone on them. We have gone into companies that have emphasized one ingredient over the other and they were not totally successful. I cannot think of one you can leave out, and management commitment is right at the top. If you don't have it, it is not going to be successful.
How do we know it works? Been there, done that. Perdue Farms, Jim McCauley is a speaker here, was cited by us in 1989. Within the first two years of their implementing a settlement agreement that included the elements that I covered previously, they reduced their workers' compensation payouts by 70 percent. They are a self-funded company. That was money they were able to retain to give additional benefits to their employees, which they did. It is a company that, although we cited and went through some very hard times, is very, very supportive of North Carolina in the development of its comprehensive approach to ergonomics. I encourage you if you see Jim to talk with him.
Kentucky Derby Hosiery is another company we cited. Gary Moore was supposed to be my partner today. Walter had to come on the last minute and he has been a good sport about it. Kentucky Derby Hosiery reduced their lost work days from 1,500 to zero while tripling their work force.
Companies that we have cited, instead of being adversarial -- the first reaction is, jump in the lake. But when we get past that, we have established good working relationships with them and demonstrated that this is in everybody's best interest.
The North Carolina Ergonomics Resource Center has been like a child to me. It is a center I was very much involved in creating. It was a finalist in the Innovations in American Government Award Program by Harvard and Ford Foundation in 1996. It has been a program that has been talked about because it is comprehensive. We wanted to create a one-stop shopping center where our employers could get whatever they needed to solve their ergonomics problem.
We developed it with the consultation and advice of industry and labor. These are the elements that these people said it needed to have. We serve as an umbrella organization and utilize the services of private consultants. There is a vendor room. Believe it or not, we have a room where there is all kinds of stuff. You can come in, pick it up, play with it, and check it out without somebody pushing you to purchase it.
We have a laboratory, one of the most sophisticated laboratories in the South, with very sophisticated equipment that measure force and range of motion. We do a lot of publications. We have encouraged other states, other jurisdictions, to replicate us. I brought Walter here today to tell you what a resource like this means to a company. And it has been very economical for the taxpayers of North Carolina because it is primarily funded through fees. We have demonstrated to the employers that come and use it that it is worth their time and their money to make these investments.
If you have a facility in North Carolina, I encourage you to call and take advantage of the Ergonomic Resource Center. I can promise you that if it is out there and the help is available, we will find a way to get that help to you.
Another program that we have developed is our Ergonomics Cooperative Assessment Program. I was delighted to hear Brad this morning talk about how we were going to build partnerships. That is exactly what we are doing in North Carolina. This is used during our enforcement activity. When we come into a facility that shows a lot of potential for good faith and genuinely wants to work on their ergonomic problem, we will sit down in the course of the inspection and say: this is your one-time opportunity to have a settlement with us without the benefit of a fine or a citation. So it is a pre-citation agreement that has all the elements and requires you to do the management commitment and the training.
It is pre-citation. You never get a citation on your record. You enter exactly the same agreement that you enter into if you had gone through the enforcement process. We just do it without that and the two years of wrangling and tangling. We feel it is a win-win situation. Believe it or not, the press also thinks it is a win-win. I have included on your chairs what I think is a remarkable front page article from our hometown newspaper about our program and an editorial that appeared on Monday about North Carolina's approach to ergonomics. I am a bureaucrat and am not used to getting good news.
What are the best reasons to implement an effective ergonomics program? I am a lawyer, I honestly believe it is the law. I believe it is your legal obligation to have an effective program. We have taken about 60 ergonomic enforcement actions and cited in about 20 of those cases. The remaining 40, the majority of them, we worked out something, either with a letter or a cooperative assessment program.
It is the right thing to do. I basically believe that most American industries are moral, they do not want to cripple their work force. There is no question that this is the right thing to do, if that is not reason enough, it is cost effective and will save you money.
Effective ergonomics programs work. I am in a position to see the evidence of that on a daily basis. I receive handwritten letters from employees talking about it, the benefits of it, or the problems in not having one.
At this time, I brought my own personal witness here so that you all know that what I said is true. Walter is going to come up and talk about how the North Carolina partnerships have worked with an actual company that has actual employees.
