Education Support Professionals (ESPs)

January 2005

Cindy Mitchell, an elementary school custodian in Troy, Illinois, gives her body an exercise workout you can't find on TV. It's a balanced program: mopping in figure-eights, washing desktops, scrubbing tile floors, lifting and shifting heavy stuff, and pushing vibrating floor buffers and lawn mowers.

It's a program with a painful price. In her 18 years in the Triad school district, Mitchell has gone out twice on workers' compensation leave with repetitive stress injuries (RSIs). More recently, she was diagnosed with painful carpal tunnel syndrome in her wrists and hands.

Mitchell's back at work, with no complaints. But in the past year and a half, 8 of 30 members of the Triad Custodial Maintenance Association (TCMA) have drawn workers' comp because of RSI ailments.

They're not alone. RSIs, caused by repeated physical trauma over time, are the largest single source of workplace injuries in the United States, striking some 1.8 million workers a year, including many education support professionals (ESPs).

"You try to do a good job, but you sometimes forget common sense," concedes Mitchell, the TCMA president. "You've got to step back and realize you're not a machine."

Educators need solid advice on how to prevent RSI injuries before they happen and how to identify RSI "risk factors" in their jobs, such as bending, lifting, use of force, awkward or static postures, or poorly designed equipment or work stations.

They'll find all this and more in the NEA ESP Quality Department's brand-new  Repetitive Stress Injuries Handbook, a reader-friendly resource that ESPs' aching joints have been crying for.

The manual lists types of RSIs, risk factors for several ESP occupations, online RSI resources, and tips on using the law and the workers' compensation system.

And, because few legal standards exist for an ergonomic workplace—where work processes and equipment fit the human body—the RSI handbook reminds ESPs that the Association is their single best health and safety tool.

As an individual local leader, Cindy Mitchell raises RSI concerns and works with cooperative managers to find better tools and processes. But for a larger work setting, NEA's manual suggests that local affiliates form active health and safety committees.

Norm Danzig, a New Jersey Education Association UniServ representative, recommends that affiliates go one better: work to create joint labor-management health and safety panels.

"A joint committee," says this safety activist, "gives the union the opportunity to formally sit down with the school district and discuss health and safety issues in an organized way, everything from facilities planning to the purchase of appropriate and user-friendly equipment."

If that concept makes sense to you, here's another: a joint ergonomics program. It's a way to think in a "programmatic fashion about prevention of stress and strain injuries," says Eric Frumin, health and safety director of UNITE HERE, a private sector union.

The components of a good ergonomics program? Among other things, Frumin and other experts look for commitment from top-level managers, maximum worker involvement, ongoing analysis of work processes and RSI injuries, and "lots of room to be honest" about RSI symptoms.

Above all, say the experts, the parties should agree that it costs far less to fix a potential RSI problem upfront than to pay big bucks later on workers' comp claims.

Andrew Comai, an RSI specialist for the United Auto Workers union (UAW),  recommends that ESPs track RSI injuries and take copious notes "when school districts complain about workers' comp costs that eat into their budgets."

And the first time an injured ESP visits the nurse, local leaders should "identify [that person's] RSI risk factors, evaluate the symptoms, and relate them to the work," says Comai. "They're not always obvious to the employee."

Finally, Comai stresses, "make the business case that quality and attendance can be improved when employees aren't working in pain. And get managers to weigh the cost of a back injury against that of a new seat for a school bus."

—Dave Winans

More ESP stories in this issue:

• Wisconsin paras shun written tests and still get "qualified"
• NEA offers grants to help ESPs use technology