Earlier this week, the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) released proposed ergonomic regulations for manufacturing jobs, manual handling jobs, and jobs where an employee reports a musculoskeletal disorder (MSD).1 These regulations will affect almost two million private establishments, or about one-third of all business. But before adding pages of new measures to the nation’s already vast storehouse of regulations, there are four important questions lawmakers should be asking.

Do the regulations cover unusually dangerous activities?

Repairing watches, clocks, and jewelry will not strike most observers as particularly dangerous occupations, yet they rank among the top five for MSD incidence rates. Many of these firms, most of them small operations, will fall under the regulations if the proposed measures are implemented. And they will have plenty of company.

In my desk job alone, I potentially face three of the 20 activities or conditions that could present ergonomic risk factors, as contained in the proposed regulations.

• Doing the same motion over and over (typing, mouse-clicking);

• Work surfaces are too high or too low (I am a short person, so my desk is too high);

• Sitting for a long time (at my desk that is too high).

What is even more surprising is that I voluntarily subject myself outside of work to many more risky activities in the course of any given week. Since a single employee complaint can trigger regulations on a firm with no history of MSD cases, non-workplace injuries could subject a business to regulations. Determining the cause of an injury could prove to be difficult and costly—for the employer.

As someone who has been known to participate in a broad range of physical activities, including scaling a three-story climbing wall, spinning (a stationary bicycle activity), kick boxing, roller blading, downhill skiing, and yoga, I face 11 of the 20, including:

• Performing tasks that involve long reaches (climbing, spinning, kick boxing, yoga);

• Vertical reach is below knees or above shoulders (yoga);

• Floor surfaces are uneven, slippery, or sloped (roller blading, downhill skiing).

Is there a musculoskeletal disorder crisis?

There is no doubt that workers can be injured on the job, even in a safe office environment. But there is no cause for alarm. According to the government’s own statistics, the number of these injuries is not on the increase but in decline.

Even if the proposed regulations were implemented and completely successful, the government claims that it will only prevent 300,000 of the more than 1.8 million annual MSD cases. That is, at best, only one in six, a poor performance even by regulatory standards.

Do the numbers add up?

The government claims that the average cost to an employer for altering a job so that it will not cause a work-related MSD is $150 and that the average cost savings for each prevented MSD is $22,500. One has to wonder why, if this is true, companies are not already implementing these approaches. In reality, about half of U.S. workers are already covered by voluntary ergonomics programs. According to the proposal, "most large companies, who employ the majority of the work force, already have these programs, and that smaller employers have not yet implemented them."

Will the new regulations be costly?

As a matter of fact, yes. The OSHA bureaucrats who invented these new regulations always claim the best of intentions but seldom link their actions with consequences. Rhetoric aside, they are inflicting enormous costs—over $4 billion per year—on businesses, particularly small businesses already struggling to survive, by reducing available money for wages and innovation. In 1992, the per-employee cost for complying with all federal regulations for a firm between 1-19 employees was $5,545. The total economic burden for regulatory compliance on the federal level alone is now $700 billion annually, or $7,000 per household.

These proposals will only add to this total. Lawmakers must understand that ill-conceived, poorly-timed, and counterproductive regulation will take a toll on both small business and the economy.

It is easy to overlook the detrimental effects of government regulation, especially during this prosperous holiday period. But if we continue to burden business with unnecessary regulations, we may have a lot less to be thankful for next Thanksgiving.

1 For a copy of the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration Ergonomics Program, Proposed Rule [29 CFR Part 1910], see Federal Register, Vol. 64, No. 225, Tuesday, November 23, 1999.

* Naomi Lopez is director of the California-based Pacific Research Institute’s Center for Enterprise and Opportunity. She is also author of the recent study, Barriers to Entrepreneurship: How Government Undermines Economic Opportunity (Institute for Policy Innovation: 1999).