Rick Hill: “Mr. Chairman, this issue of repetitive stress injury and repetitive motion injury is really a serious matter, and it is…”

“Mr. Chairman, this issue of repetitive stress injury and repetitive motion injury is really a serious matter, and it is a very complex problem, and that is one of the reasons I think it has created as much debate as it has. It does have and can have a dramatic impact on the life of workers. But the problem is that it is extraordinarily difficult to separate these injuries that arise at the workplace from normal circumstances that just occur as a consequence of the wear and tear of the aging process. It is also complicated by the fact that workplaces are very complex places; and they are also very dynamic places, with circumstances and conditions changing all the time. The Labor Department's approach to this problem has been a complicated set of rules that will literally micromanage every workplace in America. These rules will dictate changes in virtually every office, every dental office, every restaurant, every doctor's office, even those job locations where there is no evidence or any record of any kind of injury or any indication that there has been any threat of injury. What concerns many of us is that OSHA's approach to workplace safety has not worked. And it is generally not going to work, because if we take a one-size-fits-all set of safety rules and regulations and we try to apply it to these changing and complex workplaces, it does not produce the results that people expect.”