Union Contract Negotiations for Funeral Home Employees Hits Dead End

In case you missed it among all the Blackhawks hoopla on Friday, local funeral home directors, drivers and embalmers are on the verge of a strike.

Members of the Teamsters Local 727 have been in negotiations for a new five-year contract with Service Corporation International since mid-June. The Teamsters represent 59 employees from SCI-owned funeral homes located throughout the Chicago region.

The funeral employees’ contract with SCI expired at midnight Sunday. Union members are expected to vote on SCI’s latest offer sometime Monday. Should funeral home directors, drivers and embalmers reject the offer, a strike vote will immediately follow.

Local funeral homes that could be affected by a possible strike include Blake-Lamb and Chapel Hill Gardens South in Oak Lawn; and Kenny Brothers in Evergreen Park.

Other affected communities include Skokie, Wilmette, Lisle, Oakbrook Terrace, Calumet City, Glendale Heights and funeral homes on the city’s North and South Sides.

The Teamster-represented union filed unfair labor practice charges against SCI last week, alleging that SCI was engaging in bad faith bargaining.

“The Teamsters have represented funeral home directors and drivers since the 1940s,” Teamster-spokesman Brian Rainville said. “During that time we’ve never had a labor dispute.”

To avert a strike, the union withdrew all of its prior offers and proposed annual 3-percent salary increases over the next five years for funeral home employees, and to retain current pension, health, legal and educational benefits.

Union members accepted wage and pension freezes when negotiating for a new contract in 2010, after SCI claimed it was having financial problems.

Houston, TX-based SCI owns the Dignity Memorial brand and is said to be the world’s largest funeral home corporation. SCI rejected the union’s best-and-final offer on Sunday evening.

Instead, the funeral home giant countered with a final offer, which the Teamsters contend is regressive and doesn’t address the contract negotiations’ sticking points, such as pension and healthcare benefits.

SCI countered with a 6-percent salary increase the first year, and 2- to 3-percent increases in subsequent years. Originally, SCI had proposed 4.5 annual raises over the next five years.

Funeral home directors earn between $65,000 and $100,000 annually.

The Teamsters maintain that SCI reverted back to previous contract offers during the contentious negotiations, which they said eliminates pensions and ups employees’ health insurance contributions by 30 percent.

“Even after three years of wage freezes, we were willing to sacrifice money in our pockets to keep the benefits intact," David Culyat, a 44-year funeral director at Blake-Lamb Funeral Home in Oak Lawn, said in a press release.

Rainville claims SCI’s offer is a smokescreen for eliminating pension benefits by forcing funeral home employees to put their salary increases into a 401k plan, to be matched by SCI.

“SCI is bargaining toward a strike,” Rainville said, who claims that SCI has busted unions in other cities. “We think they’re purposely bargaining toward a strike because they think consumers will be unsympathetic.”

SCI owns 1,449 funeral homes and 374 cemeteries, making it the largest provider of death care products and services in the United States. SCI is valued around $3 billion, according to Seeking Alpha, the online stock market news and investment newsletter.

Since the 1970s, SCI has built its empire by acquiring family and community-run funeral homes and cemeteries, earning SCI a 13 percent share of the death care market.

In a written statement to Patch, SCI claims it has been more than generous by offering 60-percent wage increases to Local 727 members over the next five years.

SCI contended that it proposed withdrawing from the Teamsters’ pension fund because the plan is underfunded and escalating premium costs. The company has since sued the Teamsters and its leadership over the pension fund. 

“We hope that the union’s actions in this matter will be based on the best interest of its membership rather than other motives.”

According to the Teamsters, SCI brought out-of-state funeral home directors on a tour of local SCI-owned funeral homes on Saturday during the contract negotiations.

In the event of a strike, Local 727 has established a hotline number, 312-206-4123, and a website, IntegrityInIllinois.com. The website includes a list of independently owned funeral homes available to assist families in funeral planning.