Washington State House of Representatives votes to protect workers, repeal BIAW’s I‑841

Ear­ly this morn­ing, after a floor ses­sion that last­ed for many hours, the Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives vot­ed 50–48 to adopt a bill spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dan Bronoske (D‑28th Dis­trict: Pierce Coun­ty) that would repeal a right wing ini­tia­tive from 2003 that barred the Depart­ment of Labor & Indus­tries from adopt­ing ergonom­ic rules intend­ed to pro­tect workers.

That ini­tia­tive, I‑841, was the first mea­sure that the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute opposed fol­low­ing its for­ma­tion in August of 2003. (NPI’s Per­ma­nent Defense project, now part of NPI, pre­dates NPI’s found­ing by a year and a half; it turns twen­ty years old today, and we’re cel­e­brat­ing the occa­sion tonight.)

In an Octo­ber 30th, 2003 guest col­umn for The News Tri­bune of Taco­ma (I‑841 ergonom­ics ini­tia­tive is well-fund­ed flim­flam) Civic Ven­tures’ David Gold­stein explained what Ini­tia­tive 841 was real­ly about:

Ini­tia­tive spon­sors like to glo­ri­fy their efforts as exer­cis­es in “direct democ­ra­cy,” but the cam­paign for I‑841 is nei­ther demo­c­ra­t­ic nor direct. Per­haps the least pop­ulist piece of pri­vate leg­is­la­tion ever to reach the bal­lot, I‑841 seeks to ban state ergonom­ic rules aimed at pre­vent­ing many com­mon work­place injuries.

Front­ed by the Orwellian-sound­ing “Work­ers Against Job Killing Rules,” the ini­tia­tive is real­ly the brain­child of the Build­ing Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton (BIAW), a pow­er­ful busi­ness group that exploits a loop­hole in state work­ers com­pen­sa­tion laws to fun­nel mil­lions of dol­lars to con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­dates and causes.

David added:

Accord­ing to a state analy­sis, the rules would save busi­ness­es $340 mil­lion a year due to few­er injuries, more than off­set­ting the $80 mil­lion cost of com­ply­ing (not to men­tion the pain and suf­fer­ing of injured employ­ees). Yet with work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion insur­ance rates ris­ing a stun­ning 19.4 per­cent, the BIAW — whose mem­bers’ claim rates are twice the state aver­age — would still rather spend its mil­lions fight­ing reg­u­la­tors than reduc­ing pre­ventable work­place injuries.

Ini­tia­tive 841 went on to pass in the Novem­ber 2003 gen­er­al elec­tion — a low turnout elec­tion in which most Wash­ing­ton vot­ers did not participate.

House Bill 1837 is sim­ple: it gets rid of the restric­tion on the reg­u­la­tion of work-relat­ed mus­cu­loskele­tal dis­or­ders and ergonom­ics. The bill is so sim­ple that it fits on two pages (with mar­gins removed). Most of the bill is a state­ment of findings:

The leg­is­la­ture finds that mus­cu­loskele­tal injuries are a lead­ing cause of dis­abil­i­ty, account­ing for more than 130,000,000 patient vis­its to health care providers annu­al­ly. These injuries cov­er a range of con­di­tions relat­ed to overex­er­tion and repet­i­tive motion, such as pinched nerves, sprains, her­nias, and con­nec­tive tis­sue diseases.

Mus­cu­loskele­tal con­di­tions are the num­ber one rea­son for vis­its to a physi­cian, affect­ing near­ly half of all Amer­i­cans above eigh­teen years of age.

The leg­is­la­ture finds that work-relat­ed mus­cu­loskele­tal injuries account for at least one-third of all non­fa­tal work injuries, are more severe than the aver­age non­fa­tal injury or ill­ness, and are the most fre­quent­ly report­ed cause of lost or restrict­ed work time. Work-relat­ed mus­cu­loskele­tal injuries occur from ergonom­i­cal­ly incor­rect and unreg­u­lat­ed work­ing practices.

The leg­is­la­ture finds that many of Wash­ing­ton state’s crit­i­cal indus­tries, includ­ing agri­cul­ture and health care, are described by the fed­er­al bureau of labor sta­tis­tics as high-risk indus­tries for mus­cu­loskele­tal injuries. These are also indus­tries that are cur­rent­ly expe­ri­enc­ing sig­nif­i­cant staffing shortages.

Fur­ther, these injuries lead to high employ­er costs includ­ing absen­teeism, decreased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and increased costs for health­care, dis­abil­i­ty, and work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion, among oth­er costs.

Ini­tia­tive Mea­sure No. 841, approved by the vot­ers in 2003, repealed exist­ing ergonom­ic reg­u­la­tions and barred the depart­ment of labor and indus­tries from reg­u­lat­ing work­ing prac­tices to address mus­cu­loskele­tal injuries. The leg­is­la­ture finds that the absence of reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ty in this impor­tant area has con­tributed to increas­es in work­place injuries and costs.

The leg­is­la­ture there­fore intends to repeal the pro­hi­bi­tion on reg­u­lat­ing work­ing prac­tices relat­ed to mus­cu­loskele­tal injuries, there­by allow­ing tar­get­ed safe­ty efforts to more effec­tive­ly and effi­cient­ly pre­vent these need­less work­place injuries. By remov­ing this out­dat­ed bar­ri­er, the leg­is­la­ture will restore the state’s abil­i­ty to more com­pre­hen­sive­ly address impor­tant work­place safe­ty issues.

Although the bill repeals I‑841, it does not allow L&I to adopt reg­u­la­tions con­cern­ing employ­ee home offices for the time being.

As stat­ed in the bil­l’s final clause:

For employ­ee home offices, the direc­tor shall not have the author­i­ty to adopt any new or amend­ed rules deal­ing with mus­cu­loskele­tal dis­or­ders, or that deal with the same or sim­i­lar activ­i­ties as these rules being repealed, until and to the extent com­pa­ra­ble rules apply­ing to employ­ee home offices are required by con­gress or the fed­er­al occu­pa­tion­al safe­ty and health administration.

Any day that the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture votes to rescind a poor­ly con­ceived right wing ini­tia­tive is a good day. We con­grat­u­late the House on this action.

Sev­en Democ­rats vot­ed against the bill, but since the House Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus can afford to lose sev­en votes and still pass a bill, it got a con­sti­tu­tion­al majority.

The roll call was as follows:

Roll Call
EHB 1837
Mus­cu­loskele­tal injuries
3rd Read­ing & Final Passage
2/14/2022

Yeas: 50; Nays: 48

Vot­ing Yea: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Bate­man, Berg, Bergquist, Berry, Bronoske, Callan, Chopp, Cody, Davis, Dolan, Don­aghy, Duerr, Enten­man, Fey, Fitzgib­bon, Frame, Good­man, Gregerson, Hack­ney, Hansen, Har­ris-Tal­ley, John­son, Kir­by, Klo­ba, Lekanoff, Macri, Mor­gan, Orms­by, Ortiz-Self, Orwall, Paul, Peter­son, Pol­let, Ramel, Ramos, Ric­cel­li, Ryu, San­tos, Sells, Senn, Sim­mons, Slat­ter, Stonier, Sul­li­van, Tay­lor, Thai, Valdez, Wicks, Wylie, Jinkins

Vot­ing Nay: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Abbarno, Barkis, Boehnke, Caldier, Cham­bers, Chan­dler, Chap­man, Chase, Cor­ry, Dent, Dufault, Dye, Eslick, Gil­day, Goehn­er, Gra­ham, Grif­fey, Har­ris, Hoff, Jacob­sen, Klick­er, Klip­pert, Kraft, Kretz, Leav­itt, MacEwen, May­cum­ber, McCaslin, McEn­tire, Mos­bruck­er, Orcutt, Robert­son, Rude, Rule, Schmick, Shew­make, Springer, Steele, Stokes­bary, Suther­land, Tharinger, Vick, Volz, Walen, Walsh, Wilcox, Ybar­ra, Young

The sev­en Democ­rats vot­ing nay were Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Lar­ry Springer, Sharon Shew­make, Ali­cia Rule, Amy Walen, Steve Tharinger, Mike Chap­man, and Mari Leav­itt. Most of them are front­line mem­bers from swing or lean Demo­c­ra­t­ic dis­tricts, includ­ing Bronoske’s seat­mate (Leav­itt). Amy Walen and Lar­ry Springer, how­ev­er, are from safe dis­tricts locat­ed on the East­side of King County.

All forty-one Repub­li­cans vot­ed against pas­sage of the bill.

EHB 1837 is a sim­ple bill, so it prob­a­bly won’t need to be amend­ed in the Sen­ate. If the Sen­ate pass­es it, it’ll prob­a­bly go to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee for signature.