Guest columnist
Keep working families and employers healthy

By Rick Bender
Special to The Times

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It's important to our economy to keep Washington working families healthy. When we reduce workplace injuries, we reduce employee turnover, improve productivity and lower employer costs.

But the real savings come from preventing painful, chronic workplace injuries. Whole families suffer when a worker becomes disabled, and so does our economy.

Initiative 841, on the Nov. 4 ballot, would repeal our effective workplace-safety standard on ergonomics and for added insult, it would also forbid the state from ever again adopting such a workplace-safety standard unless the federal government acts first.

Every year, 50,000 Washington workers suffer these kinds of "soft tissue" injuries such as carpal-tunnel syndrome and tendinitis. These injuries are expensive. Nearly half the cost of our state's workers-compensation system is attributed to these injuries. When business complains about the increasing cost of workers' compensation, doesn't it make sense to look at proven ways to reduce costs?

These injuries are preventable; they're not accidental. That's why so many health professionals are joining us in opposing Initiative 841. The Washington Academy of Family Physicians, the Washington State Nurses Association, the Washington Public Health Association and the Washington Association of Chiropractors are just some of the groups representing thousands of nurses, doctors and health-care professionals that oppose I-841.

As registered nurse Maggie Flanagan said recently, "It's the hardest workers who are destroyed by these types of injuries." Flanagan suffered neck and back injuries while working in a newborn intensive-care unit where medical equipment was simply mounted too high.

Good workplace safety is good business. That's why many of our local businesses, including Boeing, have successfully adopted the ergonomic safety standard and have realized millions in savings. But a recent survey found that more than 40 percent of companies that knew they had ergo-injuries had done nothing to address the problem.

Under our workplace-safety standard, businesses can get free training materials and consultations from professionals to comply with the rule. Special consideration allows small business to take up to six years to comply. A state standard is needed because it will "level the playing field" so working people won't have to gamble when they go to work that they'll have a safe workplace.

A cost-benefit analysis of the standard found that it will save Washington businesses nearly $340 million a year, and have a benefit-cost ratio of more than 4-to-1. And if I-841 passes, taxpayers will get stuck for an additional $30 million a year from higher insurance rates and other factors, according to the measure's official financial-impact statement.

When President Bush took office, one of his first official acts was to repeal the federal workplace-safety standard on ergonomics. This is the president who has presided over the biggest loss of jobs in our economy since Herbert Hoover. It's incredibly cynical of the proponents of I-841 to call our workplace-safety standard a "job killer." It isn't workplace safety that causes layoffs, it's bad economic policy. Just look at how bad the economy is throughout the country.

According to the Public Disclosure Commission's reports for July, August and September, the special-interest business groups backing Initiative 841 and calling workplace safety rules a "job killer" have spent tens of thousands of dollars in this campaign, virtually all of it on out-of-state printing, public relations and media companies. If they really wanted to save jobs in our state, I would suggest they could have spent at least a few thousand of their campaign war chest in this state at local businesses. (For the record, we support our local businesses by purchasing all of our campaign materials in state.) One might be tempted to ask these business groups: "Why don't you put your money where your mouth is?"

It just makes common sense to prevent these injuries before they happen. The experts predict that at least 20,000 injuries a year would be avoided if the ergonomic workplace-safety standard were fully in place in our state.

Dr. Tim Takaro, director of the University of Washington occupational and environmental clinic, opposes Initiative 841. He notes that a two-year study by the National Academy of Sciences, the most prestigious scientific authority in the country, strongly supported workplace changes to prevent ergonomic problems. Takaro says his clinic has treated hundreds of workers ranging from Microsoft millionaires to minimum-wage production workers, and he warns that everyone who works in Washington has a stake in this decision.

Let's not leave a legacy of pain to our kids and grandchildren. Let's keep Washington workers healthy. Vote NO on Initiative 841.

Rick Bender is president of the Washington State Labor Council, the largest labor organization in the state.

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