(FORTUNE Magazine) – Legislation aimed at protecting workers who use video display terminals (VDTs) may have finally found a home in Suffolk County, on New York's Long Island. If signed into law by the county executive, as many think likely, the legislation would be the first in the U.S. to regulate terminals in private businesses. The Suffolk bill requires companies with more than 20 terminals to provide adjustable furniture, special lighting, detachable keyboards, and work breaks, and to pay 80% of VDT workers' eye-care bills. Business is booing the new law. Proponents reply that obeying such laws makes economic sense for companies, since improving the health of employees reduces sick days and medical claims. This argument raises the familiar question of why companies must be made to do what's good for them. They may find sufficient motivation in a new class of employee complaint: stress- related health claims. To help avoid them, Elizabeth Scalet, author of VDT Health and Safety: Issues and Solutions, recommends integrating other tasks into the VDT worker's job, involving VDT operators with other employees whose work they're entering into the computer system, and assigning certain data- processing tasks to teams rather than individuals.- C.H.