by WASHINGTON — The Home Furnishings Association is asking its members to write their congressional representatives to voice concerns over a proposed tip-over rule that it believes will make addressing safety issues with clothing storage units almost impossible.
While the HFA supports a mandatory standard that would reduce tip-overs that injure and kill children, it voices concerns over various aspects of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s proposed stability standard, which takes effect May 24.
The letter, signed by HFA CEO Mark Schumacher, said that the rule would require additional weight for clothing storage units that would make things difficult to manage from a sales, delivery and installation standpoint.
It also notes that the CPSC chose to ignore another initiative called STURDY (Stop Tip-Overs of Risky Dressers on Youth) that resulted from collaboration between parents groups, the industry and elected officials. That bill was signed into law late last year.
Many in the industry believe that STURDY is better as it will incorporate an updated stability standard to be published in mid-February that is less cumbersome and determines actual compliance versus the use of a sliding scale of more or less stable proposed by the CPSC.
Schumacher outlines some key challenges that have emerged since.
“Part of this new law directs the Consumer Product Safety Commission to conduct a rulemaking on Clothing Storage Unit (CSU) tip-overs, and requires the commission to adopt the new stronger standards (to be published in February 2023),” he said. “Instead of embracing this huge step forward for child safety, CPSC commissioners opted to ignore the collaborative work of all stakeholders in STURDY and create a competing final rule for CSU tip-overs.”
“It is needless and makes addressing safety almost impossible,” he continued. “There are estimates that up to 100 pounds of counterweight would need to be added to clothing storage units to comply with the new CPSC rule. That would make the furniture nearly impossible to engineer and completely unmanageable from a sales, delivery and installation standpoint. Imagine what this would do to your warehouse and delivery teams and how this could impact workers’ comp claims. Once delivered, customers will have difficulty managing any moves of the furniture and as their retailer you will take the heat from them.”
His letter goes on to urge members to contact their elected members of the House and/or Senate to voice concerns over the CPSC rule and ask those elected officials to contact the CPSC and insist they pause their rule to comply with the requirements of STURDY.
The HFA has drafted a letter that its members can send directly to their elected officials. It also offers the following link to find the elected official representing them in their district.
Earlier this week, the American Home Furnishings Alliance drafted a similar letter, asking its members to contact their elected officials with concerns over the CPSC rule. That story can be found here.
