Rules forcing employers to minimise the risk of repetitive-stress injuries with more than $4 billion a year in workplace improvements may be moving closer to being revived, eight years after corporations fended off the proposal.

The Obama administration today proposed requiring companies in the US to keep more extensive records of ergonomic-related injuries, according to a Labor Department regulatory agenda. The move may repave the way for workplace-injury regulations that were nullified by President George W. Bush and a Republican Congress in 2001 amid opposition from companies.

"This is going to be what employers view as the first shot across the bow on the ergonomics front," said Brad Hammock, an attorney at Jackson Lewis LLP in Reston, Virginia, who advises companies on how to comply with workplace regulations.

While yesterday's proposal doesn't reinstate the original Clinton-administration rules, it may lead to a revival of the ergonomics issue in a different form, Hammock said. The AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions, pushed for yesterday's proposal at its annual convention in September, and in documents it gave President Barack Obama's transition team to guide them on labor issues after he was elected in November 2008.

The reporting requirement, subject to public comment before taking effect, will "provide useful information to employers" and "help them identify these injuries," said Peg Seminario, director of occupational safety issues at the AFL-CIO.

The original Clinton administration ergonomics rules issued in 2000 were intended to spare 460,000 worker injuries and save $9.1 billion in health-care costs. The US Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest business lobbying group, said at the time that the rules would cost employers much more than the $4.2 billion a year estimated by the government. The group said yesterday that the Obama administration should expect a fight.