Study Says On-the-Job Injuries Rose 7% in 1988 : Workplace: Reports of repetitive-motion disorders helped boost the illness figures by 22%.

WASHINGTON —  On-the-job injuries in the American private sector rose 7% last year from 1987 and work-related illnesses soared 22%, the Labor Department said.

The 6.2 million injuries and 240,000 worker illnesses translated into 56.9 million lost workdays, a 9% increase over 1987.

Almost half of the illnesses consisted of repetitive-motion disorders, which afflict a growing and broad range of workers that includes meat-cutters, telephone operators and newspaper reporters, among others.

By comparison, repetitive-motion disorders made up 38% of workplace illnesses in 1987 and only 18% at the start of the decade. Dramatic increases in the use of computers and heightened awareness among workers about symptoms are regarded as key reasons for the sharp increase. Earlier this year, a congressional committee heard experts predict that 90% of workplace illnesses will be related to repetitive-motion tasks.

The injury and illness increases were significantly sharper than in recent years. Lost workdays per worker increased nearly as much last year as they had in the previous three years combined. Labor Department officials said they believe that better reporting by employers was partly responsible for some of last year’s increase. About 3,300 work-related fatalities were reported in private-sector establishments.

The department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration in recent months has been trying to shed the image it built during the Reagan Administration for haphazard attention to worker-safety issues.

It has announced several major fines against employers for poor record-keeping and unsafe practices in what Labor Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole says is a strengthening of government oversight.

Joe Kinney, executive director of the National Safe Workplace Institute, a Chicago organization that monitors government regulation, said he believes that it is significant that the number of lost workdays increased faster than the number of employer-reported injuries.

The increase in workdays lost “means there are clearly more serious types of injuries out there, or that we’re not returning people to work quickly enough,” Kinney said.

Kinney estimated that employers lost $5.5 billion in employee productivity because of the lost workdays. The estimates are based on an average hourly wage of about $9.75.

Margaret Seminario, associate director of the AFL-CIO’s occupational safety and health department, said the new figures indicate that “we must do more to stop this terrible toll.”

More than a third of injuries and lost workdays recorded last year occurred in the manufacturing sector, where 2.4 million injuries were recorded. More than 1 million injuries were reported in retail trade businesses and in service industries.

The highest rate of injuries occurred in shipbuilding, meatpacking, special-product sawmills, gray-iron foundries and automotive-stamping plants. In each, 30% to 44% of full-time workers suffered injury or work-related illnesses during the year.