Spotlight on CSSE Members
Richard Zral
As one of the CSSE’s longest-tenure members, Richard Zral has witnessed an extraordinary amount of change in the emphasis put on health and safety by both organizations and workers during his long career. “It’s so different now than when I began,” he notes. Everybody’s got somebody responsible for health and safety now, it seems. So to me, it’s nothing but good news, and so rewarding for me to see that happening. It’s taken a long time to get there. But now, companies I would never have thought would have safety programs, some of the worst offenders, they’ve how got a full-time safety person working for them.”
Richard joined the CSSE in 1976, when he was working at the Workers Compensation Board of Alberta, where he was employed from 1975 to 1981 after working at Goodyear Tire from 1964 to 1975 as a tire builder and a tire inspector. He was also on the safety committee at Goodyear for 10 years. He was one of two members who lobbied for the opening of a Yukon Chapter of the CSSE after he joined the Workers’ Safety and Compensation Board in Whitehorse in 1984.
Richard retired in 2003, but began working as a safety audit consultant only a few days later. “I had just two days off and then the phone rang. And the person on the other end said, “Hey, can you give us a hand with our safety manual?” And the phone never quit ringing after that. So I’ve been writing safety manuals for a number of companies since then, and then the last few years I’ve been doing nothing but audits for them—auditing the safety programs.”
Richard and his family moved to Yukon in 1984. For a number of years, he was the territory’s only safety inspector. “I spent many years being the enforcement guy. But at the same time there were lessons to help them learn—it wasn't just strictly beating on people, it was, I can give an example of what I saw in another place where they were doing the same thing, and why you shouldn’t do that. I tell people that doing the job safely simply means doing it right. If you’re doing it right, you're doing it safe. Because there's a correct way to do a job.”
As a health and safety “pioneer” in many ways, Richard believes that the value of certification lies in how it shows those you’re working with that you have a commitment to health and safety, as well as the depth of your knowledge and experience. “I remember becoming a CRSP [Canadian Registered Safety Professional]. I was five or six years into the business, in 1981. And I spent a lot of time learning. Because I had been in the tire factory for 12 years, I had come out of that, I'd never seen a construction site, I’d never seen a drilling rig. So I had to learn quickly. So you're constantly learning, and that's the beauty of it.”
In the same vein, Richard is enthusiastic about the importance of the CSSE to his health and safety career. “When this chapter began, there were 35 or 40 safety people in Medicine Hat at the time working for different companies. And it was nice to get them together once a month and spend a couple of hours together. And there was always a training session, and probably be an hour, an hour and a half of somebody from industry telling us about a particular thing at their place, like tagging and logging out equipment. It was a great health and safety community, so to speak.”
After 47 years in the field, Richard is considering hanging up his hard hat. “It’s been a great career, but now it’s time to turn it over to the next generation of safety professionals.”