NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Eric Frumin from APPAREL/TEXTILE
DR. MARRAS: Can we hear from Eric Frumin, please.
MR. FRUMIN: Hi. My name is Eric Frumin, and I'm the health and safety director for UNITE. UNITE is a result of a recent merger between two long-standing unions in the apparel and textile industry. They are the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union.
We merged last year, a year and a half ago. We're now a union that has an acronym called UNITE, The Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees.
We heard three cases studies this morning. One from the Reg Wing Shoe Company in Red Wing, Minnesota. Gail Sater presented.
The second was from a company called Sequins, International, which is a relatively small apparel industry employer in Queens, in New York City, and was jointly presented with a UNITE staff member, Laurie Kellogg. Third a presentation from a UNITE staff rep, Roosevelt Broadnax, concerning a joint ergonomics program at the Fieldcrest/Cannon towel manufacturing complex in Columbus, Georgia.
First, we looked at the overall conditions in the industry, and not surprisingly what we see are the kinds of numbers with which we're familiar for a number of manufacturing industries since OSHA started enforcing record keeping rules in the late '80s. What we see, of course, is a dramatic increase. Since '92, the numbers have leveled off for the apparel industry overall.
Now, this masked quite a great differential in reported rates within the apparel industry, with, on the one hand, higher rates on the men's side, particularly men's pants and uniforms and workwear, or men's underwear; and then very low rates on the women's wear side. It's not clear why that is.
It's a very important question: is it better recording and reporting because they are large employers or are their risks actually higher in these industries? Underwear, men's pants, they are very high ergonomic risks, serious risks in those sectors. It may well be that the risks are higher but it's not certain.
In terms of other overall conditions that were important we heard reports of widespread management resistance to taking action. There is also a widespread pattern of small employers, particularly in the women's apparel sector.
Widespread acceptance of worker injury is a fact of life. In general, widespread ignorance of ergonomics.
How did things get started? How did management particularly get focused on doing things in these three case studies?
Well, first, there were case reports that prompted some of it. The union, UNITE, has a union-run clinic in New York City which was a source for the case reports that started the project at Sequins, International. This is particularly important for small unionized employers who do not have the benefit of any kind of a medical service of their own; the union can help alert them to this.
At Red Wing, clearly, the workers' comp costs were rising dramatically at the same period of time that you saw on the chart a minute ago, and that prompted an initiative there. It's a cost-savings measure.
At Fieldcrest Cannon we saw a cycle of management resistance, union agitation, and more management resistance. The union had raised the brown lung/cotton dust issue in the early '80s. They eventually got Fieldcrest Cannon to cooperate. That lead to a joint committee.
That lead to modernization. Guess what?
That lead to higher work loads, more ergonomic risks.
That lead to the union's raising the issue with management, management resisting, and eventually the development of a joint program at Fieldcrest Cannon with the dramatic reduction in the rates of injury which we'll show you later.
We also heard about a unique fund which the union runs with multi-employer contributions called Council on American Fashion, that provides matching funds to small employers on a 50 percent matching basis to purchase ergonomic equipment. That's mainly concentrated for employers in the women's wear industry in the northeast.
Worker training was important in getting employers involved and reviewing the actual scope of the problem. Once workers were given an opportunity to speak to their issues things that had long been buried became revealed.
We heard a report from one of our moderators, Pat Hirschberg from OshKosh, that the way she got management interested was to invite them to an all-day meeting and put them in the same old rickety wooden chairs that the operators sit in all day, not letting them bring a cushion, and after a few hours they were ready to agree to anything.
Worker involvement was a very important feature of all three case studies. It was deemed uniformly to be essential to any effective ergonomics committee or any ergonomics process, essential to any effective job analysis, and certainly to any job modification, whether we're dealing with some of the quick fixes that were described or with some of the more complicated development of prototypes or new work systems.
Job analysis itself proceeded in all three case studies in some similar ways. In one case, the union came in and videoed the jobs, which didn't go down that easily, but when combined with management education, led to an awareness that jobs needed to be changed.
In other cases, in response to workers' comp costs, consultants and physical therapists were brought in. A return- to-work program helped identify opportunities to analyze jobs better.
Job modification, of course, is a big part of what we're all about. The biggest piece of it on the apparel side, in the two case studies on the apparel side, was moving out of piecework and into hourly work, perhaps with bonuses or not, but getting rid of the piecework system. The handwriting is on the wall. Hopefully, it's an epitaph for the piecework system in the apparel industry. It is destructive to workers' health, it's destructive to high quality work, and to a few other things like flexible production.
It was encouraging to hear that elimination of piecework was a key feature of the successful case studies.
Job rotation, of course, is critical, and that too was accomplished in part by eliminating piecework.
A shift to modular work organization was essential.
Then, of course, there were some fairly simply job modifications, like tilting sewing machines so people didn't have to lean over; providing adjustable tables, adjustable footrests, adjustable treadles. These are common modifications that are not unique to sewing operations but they're important.
The money from this program, this joint fund, of course, was helpful to job modification, as was worker feedback on the prototypes.
To present the results, we looked at some of the actual numbers. This is from the Sequins International case study. Just looking at the question of adjustable chairs, before they even got into the workstation and this particular spooling machine, these were results compiled by the Mt. Sinai Center for Occupational Health in New York, which staffs our clinics and which looked at these symptom surveys. You can see a dramatic change in the symptoms, just from the provision of adjustable chairs.
Again, the chairs that you're familiar with in office settings are hardly prevalent at all for production workers in the apparel industry. The fight over adjustable chairs represents part of the culture change that management has to go through.
The next results are from the Fieldcrest/Cannon case study. This is a case study not involving apparel but textile manufacturing -- yarn manufacturing and weaving.
Here are the results from the four-year period, looking at all other strains and sprains, besides back injuries, and we see a pretty dramatic drop over that period, both in the number of cases and in the lost work time.
This is all back injuries, involving strains and sprains, in addition to the "other strains and sprains" in the previous slide.
Again, a fairly dramatic drop. Not quite as even. Finally, for injuries overall including lacerations, amputations, and whatever else, you see a dramatic drop. Of course, the economic savings are quite important.
In regard to the workers' comp costs, the Sequins International case study reported a drop in workers' comp costs from about $100,000 over one 12-month period to a $5,000 cost for the period 1995 to date, and a complete elimination of trauma disorders.
We heard reports of increased productivity; and increased trust between workers and management. We heard reports of much improved worker education in general, including it's English as a second language; and job skills training for maintenance workers on new multi-hundred thousand dollar looms in a textile mill where the availability of new training techniques, because of an ergonomics program, allowed the employer to better train workers in general.
Finally, what we saw was a new, renewed interest in quality promotion and quality management and the identification of a critical link between the work that we do on ergonomics and the work that we do to try to manage quality and improve it. We heard about the recognition that these are inseparable and that you can't really address quality unless you're dealing with the workers' conditions.
If we had a little more time I could tell you the answers to the interesting question that came up at the end, which is, how did you convince management to go along with that.
Finally, I have left some information from the union in the back of the room, in the very last row. I would encourage you to take a look at that. For any reporters that didn't pick up our press kit, please come see me.
Lastly, in the Chicago Seven room, which is an interesting phrase, at 5:00 we're going to show a 15-minute video on the Sequins International case study.
Again, to OSHA and NIOSH, thanks a lot for having us.
DR. MARRAS: Thank you, Eric.
