Political Quotes

“I think it is quite ironic that many people have said in the course of this year that this century began with violence in the Balkans and it is ending with violence in the Balkans. So too with this issue. This century began with the muckrakers, with Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair pointing out dangers in the workplace for American workers. They showed the exploitation of the worker. And here we are at the end of the century, much enlightened, much improved, but not completely. And ironically, the new information technology age has presented new and additional challenges. As more people work on keyboards and look at screens, it presents more possibilities for ergonomic disease. So let us not ignore the history of it. We look with great embarrassment at what happened at the beginning of the century. We know so much more now. We owe it to the American worker to do better. But I do not ask my colleagues to take my word for it. In saying this, I am joining the major national occupational and safety health groups, which believe that existing science supports the need for an ergonomics standard and oppose H.R. 987.”