compiled by Jeff Burman

Bush Announces Voluntary Ergonomics Guidelines

The Bush administration unveiled a new workplace safety policy that calls for no mandatory steps by industry and instead relies on voluntary actions by companies to reduce injuries from repetitive motions on the job. According to a report in The New York Times, union leaders and lawmakers were quick to attack the new policy, calling it "meaningless" and far weaker than the Clinton administration regulations, which a Republican-dominated Congress repealed in March, 2001, with President Bush’s encouragement.

"The Bush administration again caters to corporate special interests and abdicates its responsibility to protect workers," said AFL-CIO president John Sweeney. "The new ‘plan’ does not outline an enforceable ergonomic standard, only a stated intention to develop voluntary guidelines for selected industries that are not even identified. Its enforcement ‘component’ also fails to identify industries targeted for inspection, even the highest risk industries. Instead of action to fix dangerous workplace hazards, the plan relies on voluntary assistance and passive outreach tools such as new web sites. The plan does not call for any immediate action."

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics subsequently released new data on musculoskeletal injuries that revealed a discouraging trend for worker safety. The report showed that in 21 of 43 states, the number of workers who suffered injuries that forced them to take days off work went up between 1999 and 2000. In California, the number increased by 17 percent.

Some leaders in California, such as Maggie Robbins, a health and safety expert with the Berkeley-based Hesperian Foundation, foresee few net improvements in California’s modest enforcement efforts as a result of the new measures. California adopted the nation’s first ergonomic standards in 1997, but its law has been criticized by labor as weak.

AFL-CIO | OSHA | NYTimes

Millions Oppose Italian Labor Law Reform

In the biggest strike in decades, 13 million Italians stayed away from work in April to protest the government’s plans to make it easier to fire workers. Thousands of supporters gathered in piazzas throughout the country for rallies headed by union leaders and politicians and

Demonstrators from the Italian cable company Mediaset march as part of a general strike, which kept 13 million people away from work. Organized by Italy's top three unions, the strike was labor's response to conservative Premier Silvio Berlusconi's vow to reform Italian labor law.

bolstered by celebrities. In Rome, Oscar-winner Roberto Benigni, from Life is Beautiful, brightened up a huge demonstration in the Piazza di Popolo. Unions said rallies in Rome, Florence, Milan, Bologna and other cities drew crowds totaling two million people.

The strike, organized by Italy’s top three unions – CGIL, CISL and UIL – is labor’s response to conservative Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s vow to reform Italian labor laws, some of the most restrictive in Europe. At the root of the dispute is Article 18 of the country’s labor law, which says that any fired worker in a company with 15 or more employees can seek immediate recourse to an independent tribunal which will decide if he or she was dismissed for "just cause." If not, the employer must reinstate the worker and pay the full salary since dismissal. The unions see the government’s plans to change Article 18 as the start of a slippery slope that could gradually erode other rights and guarantees.

Article 18 is part of a law called the Workers’ Statute, which provides many protections for workers. It forbids the use of private police in the workplace, personal searches, the abuse of disciplinary power, investigations into employees’ personal opinions and checks on their private life, and discriminatory behavior on the grounds of union membership or activity. Another provision, a judicial procedure to deal with employers’ anti-union behavior, has proved particularly effective.

In return for agreement to changes to Article 18, which would reduce its protections of the poorest of workers, the government is expected to propose the creation of an unemployment benefit fund, to provide protection for workers who lose jobs with small and medium-sized companies. A benefit system funded by employers’ and employees’ contributions exists to help people laid off from large companies.

CGIL- Overview | CGIL - Reasons for Strike

BBC 4/16/02 | Statute Information

House Pension Reform Scales Back Protections

The House passed a pension-law overhaul that Republicans said would substantially improve safeguards for employees. But many Democrats complained that it offered only limited changes and would actually scale back some existing employee protections. "In a slap to workers’ retirement security," said Sweeney, the U.S. House of Representatives "voted to wipe out existing retirement protections for workers under the guise of responding to the devastation faced by many Enron workers when they lost their 401(k) retirement savings. The proposal opens up new loopholes that put workers’ savings at greater risk by inviting abuse and mismanagement. The bill approved by the House eliminates a key existing protection that bars insurance companies and mutual fund companies from providing investment advice to employees on products that the company sells and earns fees from. Unions, senior organizations and consumer groups strongly opposed this change because it opens workers up to receiving biased advice that could harm their retirement security." California Representative George Miller (D-Martinez), who sponsored an opposing bill, said the new law doesn’t deal with the lessons of Enron or the "unethical behavior of corporate executives."

NYTimes | AFL-CIO

Labor Department to Increase Union Audits

The Bush administration plans to crack down on labor unions that delay or fail to file annual financial reports. It is also considering revamping the reporting forms to require more detail. President Bush has requested an extra $3.4 million in next year’s budget for the Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards. That would pay 40 new full-time workers to help improve reporting compliance under the Landrum-Griffin Act, which requires financial disclosure by unions.

The Office of Labor-Management Standards currently has no authority to impose fines on unions that don’t report or report late, but deputy secretary Cameron Findlay said the OLMS nevertheless plans to increase union audits. He says that ten of the nation’s largest unions have never been audited.

Testifying before Congress, James Coppress, associate general counsel of the AFL-CIO, questioned the new Labor Department plan, saying that the general lack of input unions have received from the Bush administration raises "the unavoidable suspicion that the merits of these important matters are being subordinated to political and other inappropriate considerations."