Unions and ergonomics: miscellaneous topics

Ergonomics

Minimum standards for private sector pension plans and health care plans were established under ERISA, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. In addition to the basic provision for pension plans, the Act also requires information sharing and a degree of transparency for participants. For example, ERISA mandates the availability of information regarding plan features, funding, and fiduciary responsibilities as well as offering participants information about legal rights related to their pension and health benefit plans ("Employee Retirement Income Security Act -- ERISA," n.d.). Although the original Act was drafted in 1974, ERISA has been largely superseded by amendments, the most recent of which is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

ERISA does not apply to all Americans, so it is important for Americans to understand whether their situation is covered under its rubric. According to the United States Department of Labor, which oversees ERISA and related measures, the Act "does not cover group health plans established or maintained by governmental entities, churches for their employees, or plans which are maintained solely to comply with applicable workers compensation, unemployment, or disability laws," ("Employee Retirement Income Security Act -- ERISA," n.d.). Therefore, the protections that ERISA afford are of limited scope. As the nation faces challenging economic times, it becomes more important for employees to feel empowered by a greater sense of long-term fiscal protection. Employees cannot fully rely on benefits, given the limitations of ERISA and the relevant corporate exemptions evident in the real working world.

2. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) offers a series of guidelines for workplace design and ergonomics. OSHA's stated goal in its guidelines are "the development of industry-specific and task-specific guidelines to reduce and prevent workplace musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs)," (OSHA, n.d.). However, the guidelines remain voluntary, subject to interpretation by employers and are therefore not legally enforceable on aggregate. Because OSHA takes an employer-centric, rather than labor-centric, stance, the guidelines are controversial. Labor union and advocacy groups like the AFL-CIO argues strongly in favor of stricter workplace safety regulations. According to Hall (2012), there are clear political motives for making OSHA a relatively limp and weak organization: " the Republican Congress in 2001 repealed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's ergonomic rule that specifically addressed MSDs and the workplace practices that cause such injures, no OSHA standard protects workers from ergonomic injuries."

3. The debate over the relevance of labor unions and collective bargaining has been an ongoing one since the Industrial Revolution. Generally, unions empower workers and provide them with a political voice in a world where corporations (and the owners of the means of production) dominate political power. Denouncers of unions claim that they stymie the political process, and create inefficiencies in the labor market and human resources management. While labor unions are often mismanaged, they should always be viewed as necessary components of a liberal democratic society.

Collective bargaining, one of the main functions of a labor union, is "a form of employer-employee relations that allows employees to be heard in the workplace on issues that affect them," (Development for Professional Employees, 2011, p. 1). Workplace safety and issues related to discrimination, as well as salary issues, may also be included in the collective bargaining process. Without labor unions and collective bargaining, workers would be collectively disenfranchised, as they are systematically still in countries with weak support for labor. Because labor unions often force employers to instate costly upgrades or increase worker pay, they are politically unpopular.