NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Q: I think over the past few days you've answered all the questions; I have a comment. You know, before you gear down to -- I'm John Geralt, I'm a physician at Troy Industrial Medical Center in Troy, which is a suburb of Detroit, which has a high number of plants that serve the auto industry.
I just want to make a comment backing up the comment of a physiotherapist yesterday who said that in his experience, most of the employees that he treats are either overweight or in some way physically not in very good shape. And what I've been hearing for the last couple days is, there's a similar comment to the education system in the United States; gearing down to the mentally incompetent so that there's an outcome of more graduation in high school -- let's not gear down to the physically incompetent worker.
Very few companies have made the comment that we have an exercise program. Several of them have said before the worker starts they have a warm-up session, which is a very logical thing. If you've ever been in industry and seen people working -- now I don't know about the plants that you all are in, but I've worked at the Ford Rouge plant in the '50's, and that was horrible working conditions.
Now in Troy, these plants are like your home, really; and yet these people have these injuries, backs, carpal tunnel -- most of them think they have carpal tunnel; what they really have is neck and shoulder problems with referred pain into the fingers. These people are not physically competent, and I think the companies that promote exercise programs, the one said warm-up before they start on company time, and then later on during their breaks, one in the morning, one in the afternoon, they do stretching exercises.
I think this will do more for reducing these injuries, and I just want to refer to the statement, the KISS principle: "Keep It Simple, Stupid." Before you gear down industry, let's gear up employees.
MR. ALEXANDER: Thank you. Any comments from the panel?
DR. RODGERS: I'd like to comment, let's say "I resemble this remark." I have had surgery recently on two carpal tunnels, and the major reason for that was personal risk factors, as you indicate, and a little bit of genetics.
What I'd like to suggest, though, is something I feel strongly about as an exercise physiologist. The kind of fitness is a level of fitness you can only get with a fairly active exercise program and a fitness program.
As you know, you don't get the fitness on the job because the level of exercise that you can sustain on the job would not be adequate for training, either cardiovascular or even much strength training. So what I have always suggested to people, and I think Don Day said it yesterday in our panel, is to be sure that these other aspects of workplace fitness, health counseling, things of that sort, are included in your overall wellness, ergonomics and safety program.
We work with several companies that have done this; they have actually contracted exercise physiologists and fitness groups to come in, on site, and have provided a full facility with all the equipment and oversight. It's voluntary, but it's also now being integrated into the medical management aspects of our program. The exercise physiologists come to the ergonomics training and actually get our people up and march them around the room and get them some exercise during the course.
So I agree with you 100 percent that it's an important part of the program, and it will help reduce some of these injuries. We have stretching in many plants; I first saw them at General Motors plants back in the early 1980's. They have been effective, but you need the buy-in, and I think some of them are a little too heavy for what they really need. While I agree with your point, I think, that to try to make people as fit as some of the job demands require is essentially saying that you're trying to have some people become Olympic athletes. You would have to be an Olympic athlete to be able to sustain that work over 8 to 12 hours. And that probably isn't reasonable.
MR. ALEXANDER: Thank you, Sue.
Q: Well, I agree, except that --
MR. ALEXANDER: Let our panelists go ahead and finish. Sheree?
MS. GIBSON: If I might comment; having worked for both companies and worked with companies who have wellness programs that are quite active, while they consider that a part of a solution, an ergonomic solution or a health and safety solution, that certainly wasn't their whole emphasis, and the reason was very simple: They had weight lifters who had bilateral carpal tunnel and hands in splints. It's a sad thing to say, but there are some jobs out there that are just so difficult to do and so demanding that no matter what kind of shape you're in, you're going to get hurt.
MR. ALEXANDER: Thank you.
I've got another question in the back?
Q: Marvin Dainoff, Miami University, Ohio. There are a couple of comments that have been made throughout the course of this conference. Bill Marras said it's not necessarily common sense; he also said that ergonomics is situation-specific; and I think it was Sue said "get rid of the consultants."
DR. RODGERS: No, no, I didn't say get rid of them; I just said just don't depend totally on them.
Q: Don't depend -- yes, just don't hire them. I would remind that you that's --
DR. RODGERS: Please don't get rid of them, thank you.
Q: Well, the issue is, we have a technical area of ergonomics as an applied science, but we also have participatory groups; and I wonder if people would comment on the relationship. You know, at what point -- the practical concern for me, I've done both research and trained participatory groups. The question is at what point do the groups, will they know to ask for help?
MR. ALEXANDER: Comments from a panelist? Sheree or Sue.
DR. RODGERS: I don't want to dominate this; I'm sure the rest of you have things to say, maybe you want to talk about it from the educational basis, but let me give you my simplest thoughts.
When I'm trying to look at a problem job in a business, I want all of the experts there. What do I offer as a consultant? I offer a knowledge of physiology, of human factors/ergonomics that will help me understand what the real experts, the people who are doing the jobs, can tell me they think is a problem. And, I can help educate them to understand how much of a problem it is.
I've never, ever had somebody tell me there's a problem, "It hurts when I do this," and have to say there's nothing wrong with the job. Usually there's something that I can point to that might aggravate that situation; not necessarily cause it, but, at least, might aggravate it.
So I try to participate as one of the members of that team. I think that's the thing we maybe haven't said, that the whole process of ergonomics involves many experts, which is multidisciplinary. It's not just an ergonomist; it's the medical professional, if they're there, it is the engineer. It takes all the people working together to come up with the best solutions.
I underplay the technical side for the work teams on the floor, because all it does is turn them off. I actually can tell you that when I was teaching a class how to use the first NIOSH lifting guidelines, at one point they just say: "We don't want to use the equation." And it was to the point where they almost got up and walked out on me. They didn't like imaginary numbers. It's this kind of issue that I think we have to recognize. And what your training group was coming up with may be the fact that you've got to speak the language of the people that you're working with, and you've got to make ergonomics as practical as possible on the floor.
Where the science comes in, and I think it's absolutely critical, is to help understand where those points are, or where there is a problem, when we need to restrict a job demand. We need to either set a standard or we need to give a guideline to say "You can't go beyond here."
MR. ALEXANDER: Laura.
DR. STOCK: I think one of the issues is, who's driving the process, who's setting the agenda, who's coming up with a list of issues? And it seems to me that that's where, you know from the point of view of worker involvement from the issues that were discussed in my panel, that really it's the people who were doing the job, who had the expertise, who have the day-to-day experience with the job who can understand what problems you're trying to address.
I see consultants, and even in-house experts as tools to them. Once they've already set the agenda, and I think, you know, many of us who go in and do -- I've done a lot of office worksite evaluations, and I'll go in and I'll give advice and I'll say "Use such and such piece of equipment," because I've read a lot about it and I've been to lots of conferences and I know that's the right solution. I come back three months later, and they're not using it, and I could react like "Well, what's the matter with them? Don't they know that I know what I'm talking about?"
And if you actually talk to people, there's almost always a good reason. They're not using it because it doesn't work because I didn't take into account, for example, that they don't use, you know, single pieces of paper so that document holder isn't going to work; but they use huge binders and they have to change them every two hours. That's the kind of thing that people who do the work know, and I feel the problem is that a lot of times people call in consultants or again their in-house technical experts, and think that they know the answers -- they know what the questions are, and as long as they come after, that they are not the ones setting the agenda, they have a critical role to play.
MR. ALEXANDER: Great, thank you.
Tolle, you've been nodding down there. Did you have a comment?
MS. GRAHAM: No.
MR. ALEXANDER: Sheree?
MS. GIBSON: I think one of the things that I've found is the most effective is working with -- as well as doing training, but probably working with ergonomic teams and helping them come to the solution. It's literally a dialogue between the team and me, and we make suggestions back and forth and we show each other products, and do you think this will work and try things? And sometimes it is trial and error to get to there; but that's what it's all about; I mean, it's not an exact science. I like to think of it as an art form.
MR. ALEXANDER: Just a follow-up comment from my own experience; it's fun to watch ergonomics change, being with it for about a quarter of a century. It's gone from being a technical art to a change agent issue, and you've got to involve people and let them have their say. Wonderful to see.
We've got time for one more question, I believe.
Q: It was just a follow-up. This is Scott Schneider from the Center to Protect Workers' Rights.
In my experience, I think there's a lot of ergonomic issues or problems that are coming up that really, it's fairly obvious to the workers and to the people that look at these issues, that if you were going to be handling 80 pound bags of concrete mix all day, you don't really need an ergonomic expert to come in and tell you that's a problem.
I think the problem comes when maybe there are things that might be a problem if you're doing them say, all day; but if you're only doing them for a couple of hours, maybe it's okay, where there's things in this gray area where you may need a consultant to come in and maybe quantify some of the stresses and look at these issues where, you know, it may be bad for some people but not for others, or it may be bad if you do it too long. But I think there are so many obvious problems out there to work on.
So to a certain extent I disagree with Bill Marras, that it's not -- I think a lot of it is common sense, because the people that are working there, they know what the problems are, at least the large problems; and I think there's a lot of those to work on.
MR. ALEXANDER: Thank you for your comments.
