Regulations threaten to change computer habits.

Both L.A. and California lawmakers consider new rules

Los Angeles area businesses will be hit with some sort of rules in the next year regulating employee use of video display terminals. The only remaining question is whether they will be regulated by the state or the city.

Depending on the source of the regulations, businesses could be forced to spend hundreds of dollars per VDT-using employee to upgrade work stations to guard against repetitive motion problems, such as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

The newly appointed CalOSHA chief, Dr. John Howard, said he expects to issue a standard for employees whose jobs require repetitive motions by late winter of this year or by early 1992.

"I have the best intentions of the chief of CalOSHA to get an ergonomics standard acceptable to both business and management," Howard said. He noted he has set up committees to work on the standard since he was appointed on Sept. 30.

In the state legislature, a bill sponsored by Assemblyman Tom Hayden, D-Santa Monica, would require businesses to install equipment, such as wrist pads and glare screens, at VDT terminals and require that VDT users be permitted breaks from using the machines. The bill has an expense cap of $250 per work station.

The bill, one of several in this area that Hayden has introduced since the early 1980s, has a real chance of being passed when the legislature reconvenes in January, said Kip Wiley, Hayden's director of legislation.

Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky has proposed that Los Angeles adopt an ordinance similar to one adopted by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in December 1990, said Katharine Macdonald, Yaroslavsky's press deputy.

The San Francisco ordinance, which is being challenged in court, mandates that businesses spend a minimum of $250 upgrading work stations in the next two years, with such things as glare screens and adjustable chairs to relieve repetitive stress symptoms, said Kira Sturney, legislative aide to San Francisco Supervisor Angela Alioto.

Macdonald said the reason the Los Angeles ordinance has not moved along faster is because it has taken Councilwoman Joy Picus, who chairs the city's Human Resources and Labor Resources Committee, "a long time to get it on the committee schedule."

Picus said she is not stalling, and in fact plans to propose her own specific law which will take into account the interests of both business and labor.

"I'm not willing to wait for the state to pass a law. We all know the state sells out to special interests all the time," Picus said. She said she has been lobbied by a number of business groups, including "the phone company."

Ray Remy, president of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, speaking before Picus' committee last month, said that rules regulating VDT use should be established by the state or federal government and not the city. That would allow large companies "to avoid the waste and cost of complying with a multitude of different ordinances around the state," Remy said.

Remy said he was speaking on behalf of a coalition of businesses which included Bank of America, Pacific Bell, PDQ Personnel Services and International Business Machines. He noted that many businesses have decided to leave the Los Angeles area because of fees and ordinances like the VDT ordinance proposed.

Remy added, "As of yet, there is inconclusive evidence associating VDT's with injuries and there is no real evidence documenting the extent of the injuries."

Laura Stock, associate director of the Labor Occupational Health at UC Berkeley, said she disagreed with the statement that VDT's have not been proven to cause injuries. "There was a time when somebody could say that. I don't know how anybody could say that now," Stock said.

There have been several conclusive studies conducted by reputable institutions proving that repetitive motion, such as VDT use, causes Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, a painful inflammation of the wrists and arms, she said. "There are people (with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome) who can't open a door," Stock said.

There is controversy, however, over whether VDT use causes reproductive problems and long-term eye problems, she added.

An increasing number of VDT users have been diagnosed with having repetitive stress problems, Stock said. She attributed the increase to a greater awareness of the problem as well as increased use of terminals.

The AFL-CIO would prefer that standards be established by a bill in the legislature rather than through standards issued by OSHA, said Tom Rankin, lobbyist for the labor coalition in Sacramento. Labor groups believe a bill would be "stricter," Rankin said.

He added he had little hope that OSHA would establish a standard. "OSHA would be defying history if it did that," Rankin said. Since 1984, the AFL-CIO has been working with Hayden on a bill that would establish VDT guidelines, but businesses have fought against and helped kill some of the bills while others were vetoed by then Gov. George Deukmejian, he noted.

Despite the past failures, Rankin said he thinks a regulation regarding VDT use will be established this time because of a change in attitude on the issue and because a number of California municipalities have considered passing their own ordinances.

"I think that's why business is interested in dealing with this issue, instead of stone-walling it as they have in the past," he said.