Strike Could Affect Local Funeral Homes

The striking funeral home directors have vowed not to picket funerals arranged before Tuesday. 

Local funeral homes owned and operated by SCI include Lloyd Mandel Levayah Funerals, Piser Funeral Services and Memorial Park Cemetery in Skokie; Malec Funeral Home, 6000 N. Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago, near Niles, and William H. Scott Funeral Home in Wilmette. 

Simkins Funeral Home in Morton Grove and Skaja Terrace Funeral Home and Colonial-Wojciechowski Funeral Home in Niles are independently owned, Michael Simkins of Simkins Funeral Home said Tuesday. 

Simkins said his family was approached by SCI 15 to 20 years ago but declined to sell their family business.

"When you own a business yourself, you have more control over it," he said. "Money was an issue, and then we would have had to trust them with using the Simkins name."

This is the first time that Local 727 members have walked out since the Teamsters began representing funeral home directors, drivers and embalmers in 1946.

"In my 40 years as a funeral director I've helped thousands of people through some of the most difficult times in their lives.  Striking is not something I ever thought I would have to do," John Liberatore, a director at Piser Funeral Services in Skokie, said in a news release.  "We will not picket any funeral we arranged prior to this vote."

The negotiations between the funeral home directors and SCI, with an estimated value of $3 billion, reached a dead end when the funeral home giant rejected the union’s best and final offer on June 30, after 50 acrimonious hours of fruitless negotiation.

Members of the union filed unfair labor practice charges against SCI last week, “for engaging in bad faith bargaining by making unlawful omissions and misrepresentations in memos issued to its employees and negotiators.” the Teamsters allege.

According to the union, SCI has already brought in out-of-state funeral directors to run local homes under Illinois licenses.

The union is asking for pay raises of 3 percent in each of the next five years, while SCI offered raises of 6 percent in the first year and 3 percent in the second year, according to the Chicago Tribune. 

By the end of the day June 30, SCI had made virtually no movement on its proposals to eliminate the employee pension plan and lift union disciplinary procedures.

SCI has maintained that the Teamsters’ pension plan is underfunded and a target of litigation. The funeral corporation, said to be the largest provider of death care services in the United States, has filed its own lawsuit against the Teamsters for its pension fund.

The funeral home employees, who took wage freezes in 2010, said that SCI can afford to maintain these workplace benefits.

A spokeswoman for SCI said there would be no statement following the union’s rejection of SCI’s offer and the vote to strike.

Funeral home directors have been preparing for a possible strike by establishing a hotline (312-206-4123) and website, IntegrityInIllinois.com, to help connect families with community-friendly funeral homes while the strike is underway. A complete list of those funeral homes is available on the website.