JOHN LINDER: “With respect to litigation, these rules would begin it all over again. Any little accident on a football field could be…”

“With respect to litigation, these rules would begin it all over again. Any little accident on a football field could be said to hurt more when one is working and, therefore, is workplace related; and, therefore, there is a requirement that the entire business has to change its position, its offices to facilitate one injury. With respect to whether big business is being helped by this or not, most big businesses have made a mantra out of the phrase ``safety is job one.'' Most big businesses have very few problems with safety. They would be fine with this. But most of the new jobs are created by small business. Perhaps 95 percent of the jobs created in the last 8 years were created by entrepreneurs who started with one employee and hopefully ended up with 50. They are the ones who are going to be the most burdened by these rules. Let me lastly say that we are not least in the interest of harming workers. We are neither in the interest of harming workers or reducing the ability of OSHA through the Labor Department to come up with some real protections regarding ergonomics; we are opposed to this overreaching intrusive rule that could shut down businesses.”