Ergonomics-related Citation to California Hotel a Foretaste of Wider Battles

http://www.ergoweb.com/news/detail.cfm?id=2183

December 31, 2007
By Jennifer Anderson

A confrontation in California between organized labor and business, using ergonomics as a political tool, is in the headlines at the end of 2007. It offers a foretaste of a wider battle, with the nation’s short-lived ergonomics standard at its core, if the 2008 election increases the clout of the Democratic Party at the state and federal level. The Democratic Party is expected to try to resurrect the standard, a development that would send labor unions into battle better armed.

In California, California workplace safety regulators have charged that the duties performed by housekeepers at a hotel – scrubbing, bed making, vacuuming – violate the state's repetitive-motion rules. According to the Los Angeles Times, which reported the development, a citation issued by the Division of Occupational Safety and Health identified eight infractions at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport hotel.

The citation was issued after a complaint was filed with the agency by two Hilton housekeepers and a labor health advocacy group that supports the Unite Here union, which wants to unionize the employees.

Under rules adopted in 1997, California is the only state that explicitly requires employers to minimize the risk of repetitive-motion injuries through training and, if necessary, by redesigning job tasks.

Recent studies have noted growing injury rates among housekeepers, particularly at upscale hotels that have added heavier mattresses, furniture and appliances to rooms.

Housekeeper Adela Barrientos, one of the two named in the complaint, said her work had become harder in the nine years she'd been with the LAX Hilton. "They keep putting more things in the room," she said in the citation, but haven't reduced her assignment to clean 16 rooms each day.

FULL story at link.