OSHA Ergo Advisory Committee to Meet Sept. 24

OSHA has announced that the National Advisory Committee on Ergonomics (NACE) will meet later this month. This committee, you may remember, was part of OSHA's COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO ERGONOMICS, announced after repeal of the ergonomics standard.

NACE is chartered to advise the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health on issues related to OSHA's approach to reducing ergonomic-related injuries in the workplace-guidelines, research and, outreach and assistance.

But hey, the committee is a fact of life and we have to deal with it. In order to show my good faith, I though I'd help the committee out by providing committee members or outside observers with a list of questions to ask Assistant Secretary John Henshaw, and maybe a list of items that the committee should work on. I invite all of my faithful readers to help me out on this.

A few examples to get you started:

1. What has this committee accomplished?

2. How effective or credible can this committee be considering that:

• NACE is the only advisory committee in the history of OSHA that doesn't have an equal number of labor and management members.
  
  
• NACE members are forbidden to discuss the need for an OSHA ergonomics standard
  
  
• One member of the committee, James L. Koskan, Corporate Director of Risk Control, SUPERVALU, a company that just received the largest OSHA ergonomics citation in years after workers were found to be lifting a total of total weight of 37,025 pounds a day and "a review of the company's injury and illness records from 1998 to the time of the inspection, ... document that a significant number of MSDs have been caused by exposure to stressors; including 6 shoulder surgeries in 2001 and 2 shoulder surgeries in 2002."
  
  
• Supervalu is contesting the citation.

But don't let me hog all the glory. If you have any ideas, e-mail me.