Public Service Announcement: Workplace Safety

Keep Your Workplace Safe For Everyone
Workplace Safety for Emergency Services Personnel Campaign

In partnership with the Alberta Government’s Work Safe Alberta workplace safety campaign, Global TV, and Pink Gazelle Productions, the JPMF coordinated the production and television airing of this Public Service Announcement (PSA).

The PSA is a highly emotional and personal message that uses John’s on-duty death – which was the result of a preventable fall – to communicate to the public the importance of making workplaces safe; both for a company’s own employees and also for emergency personnel who may have to attend the premises after hours.

The PSA was aired in Alberta on Global TV from April 2004 to March 2005. It then aired across Western Canada on Shaw Television (including CNN, CNN Headline News, and A&E) over 22,000 times between December 2004 and March 2005.

The public feedback on the PSA was overwhelmingly positive. However there were several viewers who found the message upsetting and offensive because “it hits too close to home.” One viewer wrote:

People who apply for positions on the Police Force and Fire Department obviously know beforehand they’re going to be working where they’re in constant danger, so why even make a commercial regarding safety about them? Police and firemen get killed everyday; that’s the risk they took when they applied for the job.

The JPMF took up this challenge and are continuing to communicate the message that emergency services personnel do, in fact, have just as much right as any other worker to return home to their families at the end of every shift. Not all risks that emergency services personnel face, on the job, are necessary; some can be minimized. Many workplace deaths and injuries – for emergency services personnel as well as all workers – are preventable. Traffic safety is one such area.