Workplace Dilemma.

THE American workplace is getting safer all the time. Too bad that hasn't stopped Bill Clinton's activist wing from putting in place an onerous set of rules on how best to protect workers from repetitive-stress injuries including slipped disks and carpel tunnel syndrome.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is about to implement rules that would cover 102 million workers at over 6 million work sites. All told, 460,000 workplace injuries are supposed to be prevented each year. The regulations, however, will require consultants, training, new equipment, new furniture - perhaps even new offices and factories. Everyone who uses a computer mouse or scans a bar code on a can of corn will be affected. And the price tag will range from $4.5 billion to $120 billion a year, depending on whom you ask.

The question is whether it's really necessary. Consider that the number of work-related injuries has fallen 25 percent since 1992, a remarkable development considering that more injuries typically take place when the economy is strong. (Inexperienced workers brought on during heavy demand are the ones who often trip up.)

One obvious explanation for the drop in workplace injuries could be the jump in workers' compensation costs through the '90s. That motivated employers to look for ways to make their workplaces safer, whether that's accomplished by an ergonomically correct chair or an overhead crane that makes it easier to move larger objects.

Another explanation could be the marketplace itself. One study concludes that workers are willing to take a lower-paying job as long as it provides less risk of injury. That's a big deal, with unemployment teetering at 4 percent and applicants having more discretion on which companies to work for.

In general, businesses face some very specific, and formidable, hurdles that often get lost in the translation of federal rulemaking. The president of a Virginia machinery company told The New York Times that the rule changes would, cost him $10 million and that his annual revenues are $50 million. Where does he make that up?

And any discussion of workplace injuries must include the growing problem of fraud and abuse. It's no secret that employees will sometimes report aches that were precipitated by a weekend game of touch football - or worse, by an overactive imagination. Yet it's the boss who often ends up paying the bill simply because he has the deepest pockets.

Unfortunately, little of this is getting through to Washington regulators who still maintain that the federal government is best qualified to determine how business should be conducted.

And why are these regulations being rushed out by the White House? Most likely, as a payback to organized labor, especially the AFLCIO. And a Republican-leaning Congress next year will probably make implementation a lot tougher.

That's not a good enough rationale - not for Clinton or any other Democrat supporting the changes. At the risk of appearing naive in these days of political cynicism gone mad, Washington lawmakers have an obligation to do the right thing. That means a closer examination of the inconsistencies behind the numbers - as well as less Draconian ways in which companies can be encouraged to make changes if necessary. Next year's release of a report by the National Academy of Sciences could be a positive step in the process.

Government activism can only work when the cause is indisputably just and the remedies are indisputably clear. With workplace injuries, that's not the case.