142: "Stay Safe, Stay Healthy, and Rock and Roll!" with Attorney Adele Abrams

Jill James:

This is the Accidental Safety Pro brought to you by HSI. This episode was recorded July 24th, 2026. My name is Jill James, HSI's chief safety officer. My guest today is Adele Abrams. Adele is a quintessential worker justice advocate and is a bit of a legend in our EHS community for her wisdom and advocacy. Adele is an attorney providing legal representation and compliance training nationally in the areas of OSHA and MSHA litigation. Adele is also an associate safety professional, certified mine safety professional, a nationally recognized author and speaker on occupational and mind safety. She's also won an Emmy, and I can't wait to hear about that. And in 2017, she received the National Safety Council's Distinguished Service Safety Award. And in her spare time, she somehow manages to teach legal courses as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Colorado Boulder in their master's management program. Adele is joining us today from Delaware. Welcome to the show.

Adele Abrams:

Well, thank you. And hello to everybody out there.

Jill James:

Yeah. We've been trying to get together to do this for quite some time, Adele. I'm so happy you're able to make the time.

Adele Abrams:

Well, I like to say it's hard to hit a moving target. I am based out of DC in my legal practice. I live in Delaware. I do have a place in DC, and I spend about a third of my time on the West Coast as well with my significant other who has a base out there. And that has been taking me in some interesting directions because he's an actor and comedian. So all of a sudden I'm getting my juice is flowing again creatively in what you're going to hear about being my original career in radio and TV.

Jill James:

Yeah. Talk about that. So you started. Yeah, you have a background in broadcasting. Let's see how in the world did this person become an accidental safety professional? Tell us that beginning.

Adele Abrams:

I would say I probably am the quintessential accidental safety professional. And when I run into people that I've known from back in the day as they say, and they say, "What are you doing now?" I say, "Oh, I do workplace safety and health." And they look at me, "What? You?" Because I will say I wasn't necessarily known for my safe behavior back in my rock and roll days. But to give you a little bit of the background story, I started as a small child, but I was still relatively a small child at the age of 16 and being short when I left home. And I started college at 16. And I had always been a music fanatic. My earliest memories are correlated with the songs of the '50s. And I am dating myself now. Don't try to count my rings, but I loved, love, loved music. I was a little bit of a precocious pianist by the age of five. So I did take piano lessons and played for many years. But I loved rock and roll. That was my thing. I was about 10 years old, I guess, when the Beatles hit the US and went crazy over that. And I was the kid, I've learned I'm not alone in this, who would sleep at night with my transistor radio under my pillow so my mother wouldn't know that I was still up and listening to music. And I grew up in New Jersey, which New York City area. And they had a DJ on what was the progressive station, again, back in the '60s, female DJ, Allison Steele, the night bird as she was known. And she was really kind of my idol. It was the first time it hit me that a woman could actually be on the radio or a girl. And this was at the budding days of feminism. I mean, I went to an all-girls Catholic school and they were pushing us hard to go in the convent. That did not click with me as you might imagine. But music and writing and art, those were all my subject areas that resonated with me. But when I got to college, I started as a journalism major. And I found out pretty quickly that University of Maryland, which is where I attended for undergrad, they had a radio station. And a couple of the people that I got to be friends with were doing stuff on the radio station. So of course, I trotted my little 17-year-old self at that point down there and said, "I want to be on the air." So I started off as a news reporter right when the war was Vietnam. I need to clarify these days, which war? Vietnam War was happening. And I remember being locked in the administration building when there were riots and tear gas outside, and I'm trying to do interviews for WNUC News. But I really wanted to do a rock and roll show. So I managed to finagle myself a show from one o'clock in the morning to three in the morning. And as you might imagine, I didn't make it to a lot of my early classes at that point.

Jill James:

You were trying to mimic the Night Bird woman that you

Adele Abrams:

Listened to. Yeah. And it was a freeform, progressive music, anything you wanted to play for the college radio station. And I just reveled in it. And they had a record library and I buried myself in it and kind of thoughts of being a news reporter just trotted right out the door. And so when I graduated, there was a station, this is important, called WHFS FM 102.3 on your dial. And that was all the people who liked progressive rock and roll music listened to on my campus. And I used to say, "Well, my life's goal is to get a job at WHFS." And right out of college, I got a job on a different station, W-I-N-X, Style 16, the voice of Montgomery County, Maryland. And that was a top 40 station. And needless to say, I was hating life there. But somebody mentioned to me, WHFS is looking to hire a woman to be on the air. Well, ding, ding, ding, ding. And so I sent in an air check from my college station, which was more akin to their format. And the program director called me and I met him for beers at the bar right across the street from the station. This is how job interviews were done back in the day before there was monster kids. You got drunk with your prospective boss. And we did. We sat there and got into arguments about what was the best Miles Davis album and stuff like that. And I thought, "Well, I've blown this because I've been arguing with him." But he called me and I did my first show the following Saturday. And that was in August of 1974. So three months out of college, I had achieved my goal, but I was doing part-time work there. And one thing people don't know about radio is, unless you are one of the big shock jocks or you're on a major network station, they don't pay all that much. You're doing it for the love of it. And I was. But I think back and boy, did I have some comical jobs. I mean, with a boyfriend of mine, we painted at the inside of a post office and we striped parking lots. This was my first construction jobs. And I was selling magazines by telephone. And of course waitressing. I started waitressing at 14. And I think I had my final waitress job at about 24. So that was a long career for me. I love waitressing.

Jill James:

That's beautiful. I too have striped parking lots.

Adele Abrams:

Yeah, it was fun. It beat sitting at a desk.

Jill James:

It

Adele Abrams:

Sure did.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Adele Abrams:

I looked at it and shape of things to come and you were foreshadowing. But the bottom line is, excuse me, I worked at that radio station full-time at times, part-time at other times for 14 years. And during that period, I was doing other things, including going to grad school. And I ended up kind of accidentally falling into government affairs work through initially a temp job and then through a full-time job I got all the time. I'm still doing the radio thing by the way.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Adele Abrams:

And what were

Jill James:

You going to grad school for, Adele?

Adele Abrams:

I did my grad work in public relations and marketing.

Jill James:

Okay, got it. All right.

Adele Abrams:

Which didn't really pertain to a whole lot I was doing, except I was doing some of the program promotion at WHFS. And later also at WRC, which was an NBC affiliate, I was their program promotion director for a while. And I was still doing the HFS radio show part-time. I mean, it was a very weird convergence of things. But I do want it, before I get into the government affairs track, because that is what led me to safety. You mentioned the Emmy.

Jill James:

Yes, exactly. I was going to bring you back to that. Tell us.

Adele Abrams:

So they made a movie about WHFS, the radio station. And anybody who has a PBS public broadcasting passport, you can watch it on demand for free. It does air on TV periodically. And it's called Feast Your Ears: The Story of WHFS. And I'm in it, of course, because I was obviously one of the few women who did a show on there during its heyday, but I also ended up being co-producer of the movie. Oh my gosh. And we did win an Emmy in 2025 for the best historical documentary. And while I was thrilled about the Emmy, I have to say it pained me to think that my misspet youth is now a historical documentary.

Jill James:

I think that's fantastic. So do you have this Emmy in the house where you're recording with us right now?

Adele Abrams:

Yes, I do, actually. That's

Jill James:

Fantastic. Does it have a specific place that it lives in honor in your house?

Adele Abrams:

Right now it is in my bedroom because I have to find a real proper place for it. They sent me one and it cracked. Oh no. They had to send me a replacement one, which I do have now. And I've been on the road quite a bit, so I have to find a proper home. But I was at the ceremony. I went up to the stage. Oh my gosh. Of course, the executive director of the movie, he's the big enchilada on it. And this has evolved where I'm now working with him on a new documentary. This is aside from my safety and legal work about a comedy troupe that started in the 1960s called theater, Firesign Theater. And my partner, Phil Proctor, was one of the founding members of that, along with a fellow Yaley of his and two other very talented people. And they in turn were up for Grammys and they've been inducted into the Library of Congress. But it did wet my appetite working on the first movie. So I'm involved in that. I may be getting involved doing some musical direction for another movie that a friend is working on right now. And I should mention that my HFS work also back in the '80s now we're talking, I'm really taking it through ancient history here, but I hosted a television show for five years and it was a music oriented show. I would invite bands to come in. They would play live. We taped it at a bar and I would interview them. And so some of those are still out there on YouTube if anybody is interested in - And what

Jill James:

Would they search for?

Adele Abrams:

Seeing something weird. You can look up Adele Abrams and Tacoma Tempo, and that's Tacoma with a K because it was Tacoma Park, Maryland. Oh

Jill James:

My

Adele Abrams:

Gosh. They're still out there. And I'm still friends with a lot of the people if they haven't died off who did some of these shows. So that's kind of cool. And I'm also now doing a radio show again on public broadcasting in the DC market, but I like to say on occasional Sundays. They've given me maximum flexibility. But kind of doing the WHFS movie, as I said, I got my juices flowing again about the music scene and I've always stayed connected with that. Oh my gosh. Now I co-host a show called Forbidden Alliance on WOWD, which is back again in Tacoma Park, Maryland. It's TacomaRadio.org. And it is part of the public broadcasting system. So it's really, I've come full circle after everything I've done. I'm kind of back to where I was in 1974.

Jill James:

Oh my gosh, you sure have. And you're definitely the first and only Emmy winner we've ever had on the Accidental Safety Pro. So that is cool. You are a Renaissance woman, Adele. So tell us, all right, you got into somehow you managed to go to grad school and somehow you made a leap into government affairs. Is that where we left off?

Adele Abrams:

Well, I got into government affairs and you're exactly right. I feel like in some ways my life has been a series of accidental encounters. I got into the government affairs work initially on a short-term assignment with a very small lobbying office. It was one woman and her assistant was out on maternity leave. And I got the job again, still DJing and doing other things, but that was kind of my first. She had me reading the Federal Register and any safety people out there will know that learning to read the Federal Register is a blessing and a curse. That's

Jill James:

Right. That's right. Yes, I love it. And also, yes. It always makes me want to get out four different highlighter markers because that's how I was trained to read them.

Adele Abrams:

And I mean, here we are, that was around 1982. And here we are, 2026. I still go through the table of contents of the Federal Register every day just to see if

Jill James:

There's

Adele Abrams:

Anything that might pertain to occupational safety and health. I look at EPA, see what they're up to, and then I cry a little bit. Poor manatees and all of the endangered species, but I digress. And so it was like, okay, this is really kind of interesting stuff. And I ended up getting a job with a trade association, which I probably shouldn't mention, but I will just to show the odd paths that people take. This now was directly as a result of my getting my master's in public relations. I got hired by. You ready for this one?

Jill James:

Okay.

Adele Abrams:

You might want a seatbelt for this one. Okay.

Jill James:

Okay. Okay. Breaking. All right.

Adele Abrams:

The Tobacco Institute.

Jill James:

Oh,

Adele Abrams:

Wow. Ooh. Wow. And I was writing their newsletters internally. I was writing their external magazine articles and writing pamphlets on the tobacco history of Florida and things that they would use as part of their lobbying materials. And of course, I was involved with doing some state and federal government affairs work as part of that because I was the writer. And then they found out I could speak. So next thing I knew, they had me fly in to testify on some of the state anti-smoking bills, which was just at its infancy back then. So it was a very interesting time to be working there. And self-confessions, I was a smoker back in the day at the time. They gave us four free cartons a month. I remember that.

Jill James:

Working for this trade association?

Adele Abrams:

Oh my gosh. We were representing all of the tobacco manufacturers, all the cigarette makers, smokeless tobacco, the whole nine yards. Wow. And fighting back on these. One of the big issues I was working on was the smoking ban for airplanes. Now, I'm bitten there's virtually nobody listening to this who remembers when you could smoke on airplanes. And even more comically, they had a smoking section in the back and a non-smoking section in the front as if being - Extremely

Jill James:

Comically. Yeah.

Adele Abrams:

But I learned a lot about it. And this is kind of, I think, significant as well. One of the things they had me doing was reading epidemiological studies that were coming out about smoking hazards and health effects and writing up things that would go around to the CEOs. And of course, the more I read, the more horrified I got. And just before I made a leap, was going to make a leap because I was like, "I can't really do this anymore." A guy who had been my boss at TI, at Tobacco Institute, he had gone over to a construction trade group to be their communications director. And three months into his job there, his boss dropped dead. Oh my God. And so he got promoted into that job and he reached out to me and said, "Would you like to come over and work for me here?" And I was like, "Oh, hell yeah." And it was the American Road and Transportation Builders Association. So now we're into Safety Land.

Jill James:

Yeah,

Adele Abrams:

They were. Because I was their writer. And they said, "Well, you're our writer. That means you can write our OSHA comments." So the first comments I ever wrote were on the OSHA HASCOM standard, which is a heck of a way to be dropped into the deep end of the pool. And I loved it. I ended up, although I was there as the communications person and I was doing a newsletter and I was doing a magazine, whatever, they realized I had a special set of skills. And so they started having me doing government affairs work as well. And I was lobbying for infrastructure improvements. I mean, that's a safety related thing. For sure. But I also learned about work zone safety issues. And so I think, and somebody may task me on this, but I had developed a relationship with the folks over at ATSA, which the Transportation Safety Association. They deal with the flaggers and work zones and all of that. And so we collaborated and ARPA and ATSA ended up putting on the first, I believe, work zone safety conference ever in the States. And I was really proud of that. That was probably around 1987. And just that and getting to know more about OSHA and the safety issues, which I have to preface this by saying, when you're working for a business side association, they tend to be pushing back. They don't want regulations that are harsh. They don't want enforcement. But it was nothing like we're dealing with today. It wasn't the scorched earth, let's nuke all of the regs that we're dealing with currently. And so the more I learned about safety and very much self-taught, the more I was able to help push things in a direction that would be protective of workers while ideally not being overly burdensome on employers. And then I made another jump. And so now we're talking about four years after I discovered the safety side of things. Safety.

Jill James:

Sure.

Adele Abrams:

I was hired by the National Stone Association. We're getting

Jill James:

Into mining now. Okay.

Adele Abrams:

But it was construction aggregates, stone, sand, gravel, cement. That was what they represented. And some of the construction companies obviously are horizontally integrated. And so some of the companies that I worked with at ARTPA on the road building, they also were members of National Stone Association. And in fact, that was how they found me and they recruited me over there. So now I'm full-fledged director of government affairs. We've left the communications and PR stuff in the background. And so my portfolio was infrastructure. My portfolio included all labor law, and then OSHA and MSHA. And I said, "What's an MSHA?" And they said, "Oh, that's the Mine Safety and Health Administration. And they're very important to our members that they have jurisdiction over all of these construction aggregate operations. And so you're going to be dealing with both agencies." I said, "Okay, cool." And God is my witness. My very first day on the job, they said to me, "Well, part of what you do, we have safety committees and you're going to sit in and take minutes and use that information, write our comments and blah, blah, blah." And I sit in and it was, this is 1989 now for those who want to check historical accuracy. And OSHA was considering a rule to regulate non-asbestoform minerals in the same manner as asbestos. And spoiler, we were successful in getting OSHA to exclude those from the asbestos rule. So a year and a half after I joined, we had a happy ending on that particular issue. But I go into my first meeting, literally my first day. I think I had been there an hour and a half. And there's a guy standing up in front of the room and he's a certified industrial hygienist and a certified safety professional. And he's with our biggest member company. And he's drawing on a little chalkboard and he's talking about aspect ratios and macrophages and different types of analysis of parts of particles and beavage. And I'm sitting there just horrified because I can't spell ectinolite, tremolite, and anthophylite, which were the three things they're dealing with. And somebody nudges me because they see, "Just write AT&A." And I came out of that meeting and I remember I called my boyfriend from my office in tears going, "I wonder if I can get my old job back."

Jill James:

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.

Adele Abrams:

But I want to say that that guy who gave that presentation became one of my best mentors. And he and I are still in touch today. He has been my touchstone on all things silica because he knows everything about everything. But he was gracious enough to take the time and really walk me through what I needed to know. And he pointed me to things that would help me. And one of the things, a month later, I was at my first meeting of the National Safety Council. Oh my gosh. And at that time they had a section called Cement Quarry and Mineral Aggregates, which is a mouthful. So we called it the CQ&A section. And that was when I met, in addition to the safety committee from my association, all of whom were guys except for one woman. And she became a mentor of mine as well. And she was involved with this National Safety Council. She passed away just a few years ago. But I can't thank enough the many people who have passed who were really exemplary mentors for me and personified the whole thing that there's no such thing as a dumb question. Yeah.

Jill James:

I mean, Adele, it's really interesting that you really dove into the deep end of the pool with health hazards and really significant health hazards. I mean, starting with the tobacco industry and moving all the way into mining and silica and asbestos and you're dabbling in epidemiology. And I mean, talk about self-taught in some of the most complex health hazards that we have. I mean, it really

Adele Abrams:

Is. Well, and especially for somebody who was like a radio and TV mix. Yeah,

Jill James:

Exactly. Exactly. So thank goodness for those mentors.

Adele Abrams:

Think about it though. I took geology as one of my sciences in college. And it's like out of all of the courses I took in college, other than the radio and TV stuff, that's probably the one I've used the most. I bet. Ironically. I bet. So again, accidental geologist here. But I do love rocks. I do love stones. And so even before I started working in that area. Well,

Jill James:

Rock and roll and the actual stones.

Adele Abrams:

I say that sometimes kidding. You picked up on it. I said, "How did you get from this to that?" I go, "I went from one kind of rock to the other."

Jill James:

Exactly.

Adele Abrams:

Exactly.

Jill James:

Okay. So let's move ahead. How did you manage to get to a certified mine safety and health professional? What's going on then?

Adele Abrams:

Well, this actually has some continuity to it. Okay. So I became very active in the National Safety Council, ended up being the chair of the CQMA section. And they had a couple of other mining sections, again, at the time. And I want to preface this by saying I love, love, love the Safety Council. I greatly appreciate the DSSA award. I'm going to the Congress this year and I'm speaking twice on different topics. I see you're there. I was one of the co-founding members of the women's division that they had back when it was the Women's Caucus. But Going back to this, there was a lot of feeling within the mining sections of the council that they weren't offering much for mining people. And MSHA has very unique responsibilities. They have their own code of federal regulations. They have strict liability. They have mandatory inspections twice a year. They have warrantless search authority. They have personal penalties against safety managers and other supervisors. So a lot of stuff going on with MSHA that OSHA really doesn't have to deal with. And so there was a stirring within the group that they wanted to form their own organization. And the International Society of Mine Safety Professionals was an offshoot of the Safety Council. I remained a member of the Safety Council, but I also became an active member of ISMSP. And one of the things they did was created a certification exam, which ISMSP is no more, I want to say that, but it's been taken over by the Society of Mining Engineering SME. And it's a very challenging exam. And these days it has a lot more engineering in it than it did back when I took it. But as part of my support for this group, when they said that they were going to offer this certified mine safety professional certification, I decided to put myself out there and I went through a week-long prep course. And then I took the exam and I passed it. So I've re-certified a couple of times on that. But I did that in large measure because I felt it was important for there to be a mine safety certification that could be recognized. I believed in the mission of this. And in fact, I ended up being on the committee after I was certified. I might add, when they revised the exam, I helped develop some of the questions, especially in the legal and the ethic This area. And so it very much parallels some of the exams that the Board of Certified Safety Professionals offers, but it is not within the BCSP. So it does stand aside from that, kind of like the CIH is administered separately through their own board. And so this has evolved, as I said, over the years, but I did that one, as I said, early on, but after I was a lawyer, we haven't gotten to the lawyer. Yeah,

Jill James:

Yeah. Let's do that. I'm watching our time

Adele Abrams:

And

Jill James:

I'm like,

Adele Abrams:

Oh my gosh. I will. For those who might say, "Well, what about the ASP? Remember COVID? Remember the -

Jill James:

Who can forget it?

Adele Abrams:

We've even home and we didn't leave our homes for a while. Well, I'm a restless baby. People who know me know that. I hate being stuck doing nothing, even though I was working full-time the whole time from home. So I decided this was a good opportunity for me to study up. And I did. And I sat for the ASP exam. As soon as they made it available again at our local library, I went in and took it and passed. So that was in, I think, 2021 is when I got the ASP. And I jokingly say I may be the oldest person to have ever sat for and passed the ASP exam, but maybe not. There might be some other late bloomers. And as you could tell, I was a late bloomer on law school as well.

Jill James:

Yeah. Tell us about that. How did you manage to go to law school? Why did you go to law school? And then spoiler alert, she founded her own firm too. So please tell us a doll.

Adele Abrams:

Okay. Well, first of all, as a kid, I like to argue. And my mother always used to say, "You should be a lawyer. You like to argue." But obviously music and the creative side of things took over, but I was always interested in law school. And in the '80s, after I finished my master's, I sat for the SATs and I did pretty well. And this was right when I was engaged and just getting married for the first time. And that's a spoiler alert there. And so we got married and I said, "Okay, I did well on the SAT." And he was like, "Well, you're not going to law school. You've got two stepchildren to take care of." Oh, okay. So I benched that. And then fast forward, as I like to say, after my divorce, I'm working for the National Stone Association. So we've caught back up with ourselves here. And I'm reading their employment manual. And here's my pro tip to everybody out there. Read your company employment manual. Because what I saw was tuition reimbursement. And it was flashing in a blinking light to me as I read that it was 100% tuition reimbursement as long as you had a B or better average. And there were no guardrails. It didn't have to be undergrad or grad school. It didn't have to be related to what you were doing. And I read this like three times and said, "Yeah, this really does say what I think it says." So I applied to law schools, got admitted to several, found a couple, including George Washington University, which I did attend, which had an evening program so I could go part-time at night and work full-time because I am clinically insane, obviously. Then once I then admitted, I went to the president of the association and I said, "I'm invoking the tuition reimbursement here. I'm going to be going to law school at night and I'll still be here five days a week." And of course he was apoplectic. Well -

Jill James:

Where's that in the manual? Where's that in the handbook?

Adele Abrams:

Well, the chairman of our board at that time, who ended up being one of my clients later after I became a lawyer and was literally born on the same day as me, we had gotten to be friends. Somehow we had bonded over that. And so when the president of the association ran to him and he was like, "We have to shut this stuff down." He was like, "No, she's right." And so he backed me on it and I got four years of law school paid for because it's four years part-time. And all I had to pay for were books and fees.

Jill James:

Fantastic.

Adele Abrams:

Needless to say, I kept that be your better average. You did. I wouldn't lose that. So that was how I became a lawyer. And it had been my intention to continue working for the association. And after I passed the bar, first try after I graduated, came time for my annual review. And the executive vice president tells me I'm getting a five grand raise. I'm like, "Really? I'm a lawyer now. Really?" And he looked me in the eye and he said, "I don't care how many degrees you get. We'll never have a chick as vice president." And in my head, "Oh no, you did not just say that to me."

Jill James:

Exactly. Time to move

Adele Abrams:

On. But I had gotten to know people who were attorneys and working in the mining field. And literally a week after that, while I was still figuring out how I was going to respond, they called and offered me a job. They were starting an occupational health and safety practice group at Patton Boggs, which was a big law firm. And the starting salary was a fair bit more than I was making. So I left. And ironically, they had to hire two people to replace me. They hired two guys and they started each of them at 10 grand more than I had to make when I left after seven years. So the glass ceiling, I did manage to get through it, but I had to do it by leaving. And I did my five years in hell, as I like to say, at the big firm. Realized that that really wasn't what I wanted for my practice. And so as you said, I started my own firm in 2001 and focused it as a boutique firm on occupational safety and health matters, training, consulting. I am the only attorney I think in the country who is still an MSHA approved trainer. And I kept that going for 25 years. I grew it up to 10 attorneys and support staff. And then gradually people, some left to go to other firms, some retired. And I was at a crossroads last year. Do I close the firm and retire or what? Like I said, I don't do well if I'm bored. So short of getting every professional certification there is in the world, I figured I better start working or keep working, I should say. And I've been hired as of last year, literally. I closed my firm on March 30th, 2025. And April 1st, I started with Littler Mendelson, which is the largest employment law firm in the country, but I'm in their occupational safety and health practice group as senior counsel. And I'm heading all of their MSHA practice nationwide as well as continuing my OSHA practice. So I guess that's a happy ending there, even though I ended up back in a big firm, but it has allowed me to continue doing the training and the outreach. I'm still engaged with ASSP. I'm still engaged with National Safety Council. And I try to mentor where I can because that is so incredibly important. I would never have been able to be successful in doing what I've done as the career that I've loved the best, other than maybe playing rock and roll.

Jill James:

Of course. Yeah. Adele, you had shared with me the number of fatality cases that you have been involved in. And it's like, I thought I had a lot. You blew me out of the water by hundreds. And you also talked when we were prepping for this about don't know versus don't care. Will you talk about some of those, the breadth of the cases you've done and what you meant by don't know versus don't care?

Adele Abrams:

Sure, sure. Over 30 years now, I've been practicing law. So again, don't try to guess my age. You can probably do it anyway if you listen to the stories I've been telling. But I've handled over 400 fatalities and I'm handling over a half dozen right now in real time. And some of them are on the OSHA side of the fence, some of them are on the MSHA side of the fence. Most of them have been, I'd say probably 65 to 70% of them have been on the mining side. There's a reason that Congress declared it to be an ultra hazardous activity. It remains such in a lot of ways, although I like to say the construction aggregates is very akin to construction work, but the regulations are different. And in most cases, the MSHA regulations are more protective. Not always though. And I point to a few things like MSHA's air contaminant standard. They've incorporated by reference the 1973 ACGIH threshold limit values. I mean, that's just insane. For electrical safety, MSHA incorporates by reference the 1967 National Electrical Code. And nobody would engineer their homes to something like that. But it does point out the dangers. And OSHA's guilty of this too. They have a lot of 1960s standards that they incorporated by reference. And they were trying to update some of those. But you do have to go beyond minimum compliance if you want to keep people safe. And having handled so many, I've learned a few things. And I don't want to paint every employer with the same brush. And I do represent the employers for the most part in my practice these days. At my own firm, I was also handling some discrimination cases on behalf of the workers, but Littler's practice is strictly management side. When you're dealing with these after the accident occurs, very often the employer's knee-jerk reaction is we have to figure out a way to blame the victim. And that doesn't sit well with me. And I tell my clients it doesn't sit well with OSHA or with MSHA either. And if you want to get them to open up a can of kick ass on you, just start off that way. It's their fault. Guarantee you're going to have a bad outcome of your inspection. But they do that in part because they're looking at workers' comp and they're trying to set up defenses. And in some cases, in fact, in way too many cases, the person who's died is a contractor. And then you don't have workers' comp as an exclusive remedy. So I'm dealing with this more and more. A lot of companies just are trying to outsource the most hazardous things that they do. And then when the contractors come in, and I'm talking about mines now especially, they don't know that they're on an MSHA site half the time. They don't know that there are different regs that apply to them. They may not get the training that they're supposed to get, which certainly would put them on the right path. They don't understand sometimes that they have to have MSHA training and fairly extensive MSHA training completed before they can begin work. And they assume I've got OSHA 10, I'm good to come on the site. And then when things go sideways, MSHA hands out citations and penalties with wild abandon. But one of the things I have realized, I deal with a lot of smaller companies. I do represent big corporations too. I want to hasten to say that. But my thing, especially when I had my own firm and was doing smaller, and I could be a little bit more flexible arrangements with them because they needed help. I realized I was in many cases, the first safety professional that these companies had ever encountered. And with OSHA, a company can go its entire business life without ever encountering OSHA. I like to say, if you don't harm anybody and you don't piss off your employees, you're not going to see OSHA unless you're caught up in the net, like the dolphin with the tuna on somebody else's work site and they have something catastrophic occur and OSHA shows up. But with MSHA, they're going to be there twice a year surface and four times a year underground, whether you need it or not. Now, I say only half jokingly, my MSHA clients are the gift that keeps on giving because I know they're going to continue to be inspected. Whereas a lot of my OSHA work with a company may be once and done. But while I'm working with them, I have a bit of a bully pulpit and I get to look at their safety culture and their safety programs and policies and training works in all. And some companies are doing everything right. They don't need my advice other than me negotiating on their behalf. And I like to emphasize bad things can happen to good companies.

Jill James:

Yes, of course. Yeah. I've seen it too. Absolutely. And you're taking the opportunity to educate people where you can to make the workplace better. You had also mentioned you believe in holistic settlements. Talk about that.

Adele Abrams:

Yeah. I mean, a lot of times people have the mistaken belief that if OSHA or MSHA find you, that that money goes right back into their pocket. I've had people say that to my face. Oh yeah, me too. Some of them even think that the inspectors get a kickback on it. Me too. Oh yeah.

Jill James:

I've

Adele Abrams:

Heard that so

Jill James:

Many times. Yeah.

Adele Abrams:

Let's correct that misconception.

Jill James:

Exactly.

Adele Abrams:

Because the OSHA or the MSHA penalties, that goes into the deep black hole that is known as the US Treasury. And that money may end up being re-appropriated for OSHA or MSHA in some way, but they've been cutting funding for the agencies. And so what I have learned is when you're dealing with them in negotiations, what they care about is improving safety. They don't really care about the amount of money. And maybe I'm giving away tips here though. No,

Jill James:

The agency. No, I agree with that. And I'll share my experience on the state government side. Please

Adele Abrams:

Finish.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Adele Abrams:

So when you come to, whether I'm dealing with the district, the area manager at OSHA or I'm dealing with an attorney from the solicitor's office at the solicitor's office or MSHA has a thing called CLRs, Conference and Litigation Representatives who are not lawyers, but they play one on TV and they represent the agency in a lot of the smaller matters. I can go to them and say, "Reduce the penalties, but we will do this instead for a comparable amount of money. We will get all of our supervisors to have the OSHA 30 course or we will buy all new fall protection equipment or we will bring in a third party auditor and make our audits available to you. Have two of them done in the next year and we'll share the results with you." And sometimes it's buying new devices. Right now I'm working with a client and we're trying to figure out how to guard something that does not come guarded from the manufacturer, but it has been responsible for some amputations. So what I did in that case, going back a little bit on it, was I found the guy who chairs the ANSI guarding committee and we brought him in with the manufacturer to look at how can this machine be modified? And really everybody, it took collaboration between the employer and the manufacturer and paying to bring this third party expert on guarding in. And as a result, changes are being made now in new additions of this machine. And in the meantime, we're working on ways to keep the workers safe.

Jill James:

Yeah. Beyond the one event that happened, you're looking into the future to protect people. Yeah.

Adele Abrams:

And being a safety professional who is an attorney, I do certainly know not to get out of my wheelhouse. I'm not going to try to do an ergonomics reconfiguration of anybody's workplace. Don't worry about that. But you find the

Jill James:

Right people.

Adele Abrams:

Yeah. I know how to find the right people. And the stuff that I do know, I can help them with while they've got me on the clock anyway, let's figure out, let's design a silica sampling program for you for your operation. And yes, you're going to bring somebody in from the outside to do the sampling, but I can at least get a running start on it. And silica is an area I have done quite a bit of work all the way back to the American Road Builders back in the '80s. Silica was an issue then. And that's something I have been working on throughout. I've even had peer reviewed papers published on silica now. Who would've thought a rock and roll DJ would be doing that, huh?

Jill James:

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, Adele, I think what you're sharing is really important. And I think it's smart for us to be sharing the ways in which employers can work on settlement agreements with agencies like MSHA and OSHA. I did the same thing. I worked for state OSHA in Minnesota. And you were mentioning earlier about the misconception and the urban myths that people believe that investigators are lining their pockets with the fines that they collect or that the agency itself is. And in state government, in Minnesota specifically, every year at the beginning of the inspection year, I would ask, where is the fine money going this year? And I would specifically share that with employers to dispel those myths. So in my state, some years the money would go into the general fund and some years it would go to workers' compensation. And so I would always ask, especially on the years that it went to workers' compensation, that went for employees or workers that were injured whose employers didn't have workers' compensation insurance. And I was always careful to explain, it's not going to line anybody's pockets. It's going to this, this year, and here's what it's used for. And like you, always would encourage employers to contest their citations. And they'd look at me and they go, "What? But this is legit. You found stuff." And I said, "I know, but what if you could take the money instead of paying the fine or all of the fine, you could put that back into your program. You could put that into improving this, you could put that into fall protection like you're saying, or to a study or to help the greater good and including your workplace. And so you and I doing the same things, you were doing it on one side and I was doing it from the other."

Adele Abrams:

And one thing I do want to note is you mentioned that you worked for the state OSHA and there were 22 states plus the territories that do run their own state OSHA programs. I find that they are much easier to work with overall than. I might carve Cal/OSHA out of that. But Cal/OSHA is a pure life form and I'm so glad that we have Cal/OSHA experts at my firm and I don't have to be studying up on all of their unique rules in the moment all the time anymore. But generally, I was based in Maryland with my firm. So I had Maryland OSHA, I had Virginia OSHA that I dealt with regularly, as well as other ones around the country. And to your point, I think they have more flexibility at the state level to really develop kind of a correlation between the monies they collect from citation revenue and putting it back into things. I know Maryland OSHA has a great training and consultation program. They have a wonderful library back when people were using videos of videos you could borrow. They held a number of training courses every year for free for everybody in the state. And I attended them because I wanted to vet what the information that they were handing out would be. And not only were these good courses, but when they'd recognize me being there, they'd bring me in to start adding to the conversation. And that was always fun. But federal OSHA, their hands are tied. That money is going to be going into the treasury. It doesn't mean though that they won't make deals with you and they will. The one thing in previous administrations, I saw a lot more corporate-wide settlement agreement approaches to things where if Federal OSHA, I'm talking, that was going to give you a big reduction in penalties. They wanted to see you roll things out across the board, nationally across your company. Yeah, makes

Jill James:

Sense.

Adele Abrams:

And those CSAs usually included adopting safety and health management program or I2P2, some call it. And I'm not seeing that so far, at least in this go around of the Trump administration. But we have to be mindful. There's legislation pending right now to abolish OSHA. It's HR 86. And that's the kind of stuff that can be attached to one of these must pass bills. The sponsor of it is Congressman Andy Biggs from Arizona. He's running now for the governor of Arizona. He wins. Excuse me. What's that going to do to Arizona's state program? So politics and safety really should not be connected. And for years, for 25 years, I was the national lobbyist for the American Society of Safety Professionals. That was one of the jobs I had as an attorney. And I was able to walk into Democratic offices and Republican offices. We testified before Congress probably a half a dozen times while I was their lobbyist. And half the time we were invited by the Republicans, half the time we were invited by the Democrats. And it really pains me to see safety now becoming, again, one of these politicized topics that we have. And the latest things that maybe people aren't aware of, but should be, is that the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission or OSHRC is down to one commissioner. It can no longer conduct business. It cannot approve any motions to reopen. It cannot accept any appeals. Because

Jill James:

They

Adele Abrams:

Don't

Jill James:

Have a quorum with

Adele Abrams:

One human being. They do not have a quorum with one. And on the mining side, the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, which has five members typically, they are now down to three members because President Trump in May, over a weekend by email, removed one of the sitting commissioners who had been appointed and Senate confirmed by President Biden and who was supposed to have been in office there until 2028. So of course he's suing the agency, but this is setting up for the Supreme Court a revisit to a decision most people on here probably won't care about called Jansky. But the issue saying that if a matter could be tried in common law, then there should not be an independent adjudicatory agency within the federal government. And their target was the Securities and Exchange Commission, but they're going to use that same theory as a basis to get rid of Ostrich and FEMSRIC potentially. If that happens, boy, is litigating an OSHA case going to be expensive because you're going to have to put a jury trial on in your local court and you're going to be trying it to a jury that has no expertise in this area. Our ALJs on Ostrick and FEMSRIC and the commissioners, they are subject matter experts on safety and health. We have that issue at the state level in Maryland. Things are heard by administrative law judges in our office of administrative hearings. And one day they're hearing a child abuse case and the next day it's a nurse's licensure case. And the next it's some kind of boundary case. And then we walk in and we're talking about trenching and excavation. Oh my gosh. And they didn't have a clue as to what any of the terminology means.

Jill James:

Exactly.

Adele Abrams:

Exactly. So it's always an uphill battle fighting these cases if you have to go to trial in these state courts. And sometimes the appeals are. I've had to do that to the Circuit Court of Appeals in Prince George's County, Maryland. And now you're dealing with judges who are mostly handling divorces. All of a

Jill James:

Sudden you're talking occupational health and safety. Yeah. Adele, as we wind up our time today, there's two things I wanted to ask you. One is this topic that we're talking about right now in terms of staying current and knowing what's happening legislatively and on the standards front, what's changing. People may wonder like, gosh, how does she. I mean, you're an attorney obviously, so you have your finger on this, but if people want to know a basic place to go on the web where they can pay attention to what's changing, could you share that with the listeners? And then number two, I wanted to close by asking you about legacy as you see it for yourself right now in the state of the profession. So could you take one and then the other?

Adele Abrams:

Sure. Well, in terms of how to stay current, aside from the usual subscriptions to the fairly costly publications that are out there, a few things I'll mention. One is a newsletter, which is free, called Confined Space. That's done by Jordan Barab, who was the number two person at OSHA. He worked under David Michaels there. And before that, he was the Democratic staffer for about 20 years on the House Education and Labor Committee. And he puts out a weekly newsletter that has a ton of current information in it. Of course, I'll be self-serving and say, if you go to litler.com, we tend to post a lot of things in this area as well. And we have newsletters that you can subscribe to that are free. In addition, I recommend looking at, if you are a member of the National Safety Council, if you're a member of the American Society of Safety Professionals or the American Industrial Hygiene Association, they all have government affairs representatives and they stay pretty much abreast of that. So the national posts that information on their websites if you belong to a regional chapter, I'm the past CEO of the Chesapeake Region Safety Council, which covered five states for the National Safety Council. We would put information out to our members. And of course, LinkedIn, if you follow these safety organizations, follow me on LinkedIn. I post a lot of this stuff too. But your associations, there is a power in association, whether it is a road builders association or a mining association or manufacturer's association or just your chambers of commerce. They will keep you attuned to what's going on. If you are affiliated with or interested in unions, those are places. And the Center for Protection of Workers' Rights, CPWR, they do a lot of educational programs. And again, they have a wealth of information. So these are some of the sources I'm looking at pretty much on a daily or weekly basis myself to stay abreast of what's going on.

Jill James:

Thank you, Adele. Those are great.

Adele Abrams:

Yeah. Now in terms of your question about my legacy, I will say when I went over to Littler last year, it was with an eye toward that. I am getting older, although I refuse to admit it. And I didn't want to just close my firm. The clients I was dealing with, I've had relationships with in some cases for 25 or 30 years. And so I wanted them to have a soft landing where I could continue to work on their matters. But also with Littler, they gave me really a great opportunity, which is to be their MSHA maven. And so now one of the things I'm doing is teaching associates at Littler around the country, what is an MSHA? Back where I started in 1989, what's an MSHA? And trying to share how to litigate these cases because it is so different from OSHA so that then I'm training the next generation of MSHA lawyers now. That is part of it. I still try to give back. I spoke at the American Bar Association's Occupational Safety and Health Conference this year. I regularly do the Energy and Mineral Law Foundation's MSHA Conference. I teach a mine safety law workshop a couple of times a year through another organization. And I speak at a lot of conferences, as you probably know, where I can share some of this information. I'm working now on. I'm a little late, but I've co-authored several of the books that ASSP publishes, the Safety Professionals Handbook being one of them, and Construction Safety Management and Engineering. I have three chapters in there and I'm working on wrapping up the update of those chapters for the third edition. I write a column on mine safety for Rock Products Magazine. So I'm trying to just continue to share information. I was a mentor through the ASSP Women in Safety Excellence Program for quite a few years, and also with this National Safety Council. I'm very active in their women's division. So I guess that's really my legacy would be - Sure is. She knew her music, could put together a darn good song list with wonderful segues, and she saved some lives. That's really my goal.

Jill James:

Oh my gosh, that's fantastic. Fantastic, Adele. Thank you so much. What a generous amount of time you have given us today and what a story. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be able to have your story archived here with the Accidental Safety Pro, and thank you so much. Thank you so much for your time today.

Adele Abrams:

Well, thank you. And everybody stay safe, stay healthy, and rock and roll.

Jill James:

That's right. Thank you all for spending your time listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good. May our employees and those we influence know that our profession cares deeply about human wellbeing, which is the core of our practice. If you aren't subscribed and you want to hear past and future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the podcast app, or any other podcast player you'd like. Or if you prefer, you can read the transcript and listen to at hsi.com. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review us on iTunes. It really helps us connect the show with more and more safety professionals like Dell and I. Special thanks to Emily Gould, our podcast producer. And until next time, thanks for listening.