Bonnie Halper was banging out advertising and publicity copy for RCA Records 2 1/2 years ago when she felt a tingling in her right pinky. Not knowing what caused it, Halper kept right on typing. Within half an hour her right hand and arm were numb. In less than a month, she was effectively disabled on both sides -- unable to turn a doorknob, tie her shoelaces, button her clothes or brush her teeth without excruciating pain.
At first Halper didn't want to accept her doctor's diagnosis: repetitive strain injury (RSI) caused by too many long hours at the word processor. Neither did the company, which she says accused her of exaggerating her symptoms to get out of work. According to Halper, RCA managers demanded that she withdraw a workers' compensation claim and tell her caseworker that the injury wasn't job related after all. When she refused, says Halper, they began a campaign of intimidation and harassment. They moved her into a smaller office. They excluded her from meetings. They asked her to take a 40% salary cut. "You have 24 hours to decide on this offer," Halper quotes a supervisor as telling her, "If you don't accept, you're fired."
Instead, Halper hired an attorney and sued RCA Records and its parent company, Bertelsmann Music Group, for $50 million. (A spokesperson for Bertelsmann would not comment on the case.) Halper also filed a claim against her employer under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act -- one of the first such claims filed by an RSI victim in New York.
But it won't be the last. Hundreds of thousands of workers have been gripped by RSI, and many of them are furious. In the U.S. alone, more than 2,000 have filed lawsuits against the makers of computer equipment. Two big cases -- a multimillion-dollar suit by four newspaper reporters who developed RSI while using the Atex word-processing system, and a similar challenge to IBM -- are expected to go to court this fall. "It's not just typists, it's artists, blacksmiths, hairdressers, massage therapists and people in dozens of other professions," says Stephanie Barnes, a former secretary and RSI victim who went on to found the Association for Repetitive Motion Syndromes, based in Santa Rosa, California. "It's an epidemic."
Companies could soon find themselves even more vulnerable to RSI suits. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration is about to unveil for public comment steps the agency proposes that companies should follow in order to reduce the danger of RSI in offices, factories and retail outlets. Not only will the rules make it harder for employers to claim they didn't know about the problem, but they could be forced to change the way they do business. One of the measures OSHA plans to propose, for example, would require employers to redesign jobs associated with a high risk for RSI -- which could include any task that involves typing at a computer for four or more hours a day.