Alberta Labour minister Christina Gray says the government will take action to protect service station workers after Ki Yun Jo, the 54-year-old owner of a Thorsby Fas Gas, was killed over the Thanksgiving long weekend attempting to stop a gas-and-dash robbery. Although Gray hasn’t hinted at what form that might take, whether it be through regulation, or legislation, saying there are many options to consider.
Whatever form they decide on all we can say is it is about time. We called upon the provincial government to take action two years ago when Calgary gas station employee, Maryam Rashidi, was struck and killed in June 2015 in yet another attempt to stop a gas thief.
Currently B.C. is the only Canadian province with pre-pay pump laws. The regulation, known as Grant’s Law, was enacted in 2008 after gas attendant Grant DePatie was dragged to death over a $12 theft in 2005.
Besides making it mandatory for drivers to pay before they pump, other safety provisions such as either having at least two employees on any night-time retail shift, or installing a safety barrier between the worker and the customers.
However, it didn’t take long until WorkSafeBC, the province’s equivalent to Alberta Occupational Health and Safety, to start to soften the regulations in Grant’s Law, stating that it wasn’t feasible for retailers to hire additional staff, or erect barriers.
Instead of having two people on shift, convenience stores can follow other safety procedures, including time-lock safes that can’t be opened during late night hours, video surveillance, as well as keeping limited amounts of cash and lottery tickets on hand. In our opinion, we think this is also a mistake.
There is an old adage that there is safety in numbers and there is a lot of truth to that statement. Whether it is on the battlefield, schoolyard, or in the workplace, when it comes to an individual’s safety, often more is better. Yes pre-pay has proven to be effective. In B.C. since it has been introduced, there hasn’t been one death attributed to a gas and dash. But we are just as concerned by the fact that often these types of businesses only have one employee scheduled at a time. Including, from our understanding, some service stations in Barrhead. This causes its own safety issues, such as what happens if that person has a medical emergency. We believe the government needs to take more steps to protect these workers and to do that more than pre-pay legislation is needed.
After Rashidi’s death the government started a series of stakeholder consultations about whether Alberta should enact something similar to Grant’s Law, but those were complete a year ago. Hopefully the government gleaned some good information from those sessions, because in order to protect workers, time is of the essence.
