Workplace transformation and the rise in cumulative trauma disorders: Is there a connection?

Abstract

The workplace transformation movement in the U.S. has made rapid progress since its emergence in the early 1980s. A recent survey of manufacturing establishments with at least fifty workers found, for example, that roughly half of the surveyed plants had embarked on experiments with quality circles, work teams, or total quality management techniques (Osterman, 1994, p. 177). Employee involvement schemes, such as quality circles (QCs) and work teams, are being combined with programs, such as total quality management (TQM), to improve product quality and eliminate inefficiencies in production.l Over roughly the same time period that workplace transformation has been advancing, occupational illnesses related to cumulative trauma disorders (e.g., conditions due to repeated pressure, vibration, or motion, such as carpal tunnel syndrome) have also been rising. The rate of cumulative trauma disorders (CTDs) in manufacturing (number of illnesses per 10,000 workers) went from 16.6 in 1984 to 104.6 in 1991. While CTDs accounted for only 18 percent of all occupational illnesses in 1980, by the decade's end this number had grown to 56 percent. Indeed, by the early 1990s, illnesses associated with CTDs resulted in the longest absences from work of all health and safety-related events and exposures (U.S. Department of Labor, 1992, pp. 3, 5). 2 This trend has not escaped the attention of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration which in November 1999 advanced sweeping ergonomic standards designed to address the problem. California has recently adopted ergonomic standards, but the proposed OSHA standards are even more stringent. The proposed federal standards cover 27 million employees and will require 1.6 million employers to disseminate information about ergonomics and to adopt a system for reporting and responding to problems. Is there a connection between these two trends in the workplace? Case study evidence, much of it from Japanese auto transplants in the U.S., suggests that there is. We

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