In a 56-44 vote, the Senate voted to repeal President Clinton's last-minute rules that labor leaders said could have prevented as many as 500,000 workplace injuries a year — most due to repetitive stress. Republicans voted en masse to revoke the regulations, which they argued created undue burdens, primarily financial, for businesses. After exhaustive lobbying by Majority Whip (and repeal effort sponsor) Don Nickles, the GOP bloc was padded by votes from six moderate Democrats, including high-profile consensus builders John Breaux and Mary Landrieu, both of Louisiana.
Business leaders were delighted by the move, and grateful for Republican support. For every exuberant executive, however, there was at least one furious AFL-CIO member.
In order to review and revoke Clinton's rules, the Senate dug up the 1996 Congressional Review Act, a rarely used safety net that allows Congress to overturn federal regulations without holding hearings and without more than 10 hours of debate, and prohibits the reintroduction of "substantially similar" legislation to replace the dismissed rules.
This statute, Democrats argued angrily, renders Congress virtually impotent in terms of addressing ergonomic injuries, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, which affect as many as 2 million American workers. Republicans rejected those fears Monday, citing Labor Secretary Elaine Chao's assurances that new, "comprehensive" ergonomics guidelines will, in fact, be introduced and implemented quickly.
The House will take up the ergonomics rules later this week — and Republican leaders fully expect a reprise of Monday's dismissal.
TIME congressional correspondent Douglas Waller weighs in on the Senate vote, and speculates on the future of ergonomics regulations.
TIME.com: What can we take away from this vote?
Waller: This was a major win for the Republicans. And this was a huge fight between labor and business over these ergonomics rules. Big business claims these rules could cost them $100 billion a year; labor disputes this, saying that any costs would be outweighed by the benefits of keeping a healthy workforce on task.
This vote was really the first big test of bipartisanship — and there wasn't a whole lot of that on the Senate floor Monday.
What can we expect from the House vote?
Waller: The vote in the House is expected to be quite a bit closer than what happened in the Senate. Although, of course, everyone expected the Senate vote to be a lot closer than it actually was, so you never know.
Did the debate go as expected?
Waller: It went more or less as expected. Ergonomics regulations were the Republicans' first target among the eleventh-hour regulations issued by the Clinton administration
Were these rules an executive order?
Waller: No. These are regulations, not an executive order. They were 10 years in the making and were approved by OSHA in November, then signed by President Clinton.
Now what happens to ergonomics reform?
Waller: At this point, assuming the House votes in sync with the Senate, it will be up to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to introduce new rules.
And do we know what type of legislation Chao might introduce?
Waller: We don't know yet. But it's certainly safe to assume any new rules will be more acceptable to Republican interests.