Another straw for the camel's back
Who makes the laws in America?
Before adjourning for its holiday recess, the House of Representatives -- you remember, the folks who used to have sole power to originate federal legislation? -- voted that since the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has yet to provide any scientific evidence that workplace injuries can be substantially reduced by forcing employers to spend billions on "ergonomic workstation redesign," OSHA must wait at least another year before issuing such rules.
But then the Senate adjourned without rubber-stamping that House ban.
Leaping through this loophole (as though bureaucratic agencies are now free to make any law they choose, unless both houses of Congress specifically (start ital)forbid(end ital) them) the administration "rushed to roll out its proposal ... after lawmakers left town this weekend," reports The Associated Press.
Labor Secretary Alexis Herman contends employers will save an estimated $5 billion a year in medical costs and increased productivity if only they'll follow the new rules. But don't private employers already have the best possible incentive to adopt measures that really reduce injuries and save money?
In fact, Kevin Burke, spokesman for Food Distributors International, told the Washington Post that OSHA's $4.2 billion annual cost estimate "has no relevance to reality." The food distributors estimate it would cost $26 billion annually just to retool 80 of their facilities to meet these new standards. And that's in a (start ital)single industry(end ital).
Such proposals are always promoted as common sense, flexible measures which won't cost anyone much. Then the little mom-and pop newsstand that wants to sell take-out pizzas is informed that would make them a "restaurant," and is handed the five-digit estimate for installing the his-and-hers handicapped-friendly restrooms now required under the federal Disabilities Act ...
This time, OSHA Administrator Charles Jeffress assures us the average "workstation fix" will cost only $150. Why, it will be judged adequate, should a worker not be able to reach an assembly line, to merely let him or her "stand on a box," Mr. Jeffress asserts.
Really? Just any old box? Do you suppose we could see the official government specifications for an acceptable box, Mr. Jeffress?
The mere preamble to these new OSHA rules runs to 1,000 pages. And Mr. Jeffress further instructs us: "One of the hurdles we have to overcome is the idea that there is no solution to these problems and that people just wear out in certain jobs."
Dare we ask who will be the first attorney to haul a professional sports franchise into court, pointing out that 34-year-old pitchers and power forwards and running backs can no longer be tossed aside under the now-outlawed notion that "people just wear out in certain jobs"? After all, how expensive would it be to simply require that batters, tacklers, and base runners move about on crutches, to give our aging sports hero another 30 years?
Organized labor is apparently gung ho for the new plan, with John Sweeney of the Democratic Party's labor affiliate, the AFL-CIO, exclaiming "Government action to prevent the crippling of working men and women is long overdue."
Has Mr. Sweeney noticed one of the "fixes" authorized under the new rules would be "buying equipment such as conveyors to mitigate strains from lifting"? Once the expensive new mandated robots are in place, can anyone spell "layoffs"? Or will those now be banned, too?
Finally, if such rules are truly necessary, why on earth does OSHA propose to exempt firms engaged in construction, maritime activities, and agriculture? Is the health of farmers, merchant sailors, and bulldozer operators more expendable than that of nurses, computer operators, and airport baggage handlers? Or do they simply work for industries whose accounts in Congress are marked "paid up"?
Once such bureaucratic ant farms as OSHA are created, they are institutionally incapable of ever announcing: "Got the problem under control, so we'll be shutting down next year. Hope you can find another use for the building -- shall we turn out the lights?"
No. Just as the EPA, finding no more sulfurous smokestack emissions with which to do noble battle, now undertakes to free the world of dust, so has OSHA apparently wearied of hassling family-owned brickworks to post "toxic" warnings on sheds full of sand, and now aspires to bigger and better make-work projects.
The irony of the television talking heads granting credit to the Clinton administration for our present booming economy when they keep pulling stuff like this is palpable. Ayn Rand had this bunch down cold 55 years ago, when in "Atlas Shrugged" she had industrialist Hank Rearden ask: "How do you expect me to produce after I go bankrupt?"
" 'You won't go bankrupt. You'll always produce,' said Dr. Ferris indifferently, neither in praise nor in blame, merely in the tone of stating a fact of nature, as he would have said to another man: You'll always be a bum. 'You can't help it. It's in your blood. Or, to be more scientific: you're conditioned that way.' ...
"Then Lawson said softly, half in reproach, half in scorn, 'Well, after all, you businessmen have kept predicting disasters for years, you've cried catastrophe at every progressive measure and told us that we'll perish -- but we haven't.' "
Fifty-five years later, and they're still piling straws on the camel's back.
Maybe -- like lemmings headed for the cliff, or the scorpion who stings the frog while being ferried across the river -- it's just their nature.
Vin Suprynowicz, assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is author of the new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998."
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Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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