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Washington, D.C.-- The nation's largest independent union of federal workers today described as "a dangerous piece of legislation" a Republican proposal to delay implementation of health and safety standards designed to reduce repetitive motion injuries, such as the carpal tunnel syndrome which is so common in an office workplace setting.

President Robert M. Tobias of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) urged Congress to turn back efforts to enact H.R. 987, a bill pending in the House Workforce Protections Subcommittee.

"This bill would seriously jeopardize workplace safety," Tobias said, by delaying, until yet another study is conducted, the implementation of an ergonomic standard by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). That would be the third such study, he said.

"Federal workers have waited long enough for these standards," Tobias added, noting that then?Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole promised to issue such standards in 1990. Attention to ergonomic injuries, including those affecting the hands, back and other segments of the musculoskeletal system, is particularly important for women. While they make up some 46 percent of the workforce, women suffer more than 62 percent of ergonomic injuries.

The Republican?sponsored measure would delay the OSHA standard until sometime in the year 2001, Tobias said, pending a second study of the issue by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)??which, along with the National Institutes of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), previously has confirmed the need for such standards in the workplace.

Tobias, whose union represents more than 155,000 employees in 21 agencies and departments, said the OSHA standard would help lower federal workers compensation costs and "protect the 650,000 American workers who are victims of costly and preventable ergonomic injuries" every year.