Content warning: This story contains potentially disturbing details about death.
A recent arbitration ruling has provided a rare and detailed glimpse into three of Burnaby's bustling death-care operations.
Texas-based funeral home giant Service Corporation International, which owns Burnaby's Forest Lawn and Ocean View cemeteries, entered arbitration with the Construction and Specialized Workers' Union, Local 1611, which represents workers at those sites, after bargaining between the two parties hit a wall, according to a ruling by arbitrator Jitesh M. Mistry last Thursday.
The negotiations were complicated by the addition of more than 50 formerly non-union embalmers, transfer specialists, dispatchers and funeral services attendants at the Vancouver Personal Care Centre — an operation at Forest Lawn that deals with about 5,300 dead people in a year.
A major sticking point in bargaining was wages, with the union saying SCI’s rate proposals for the newly unionized employees were "significantly lower" than those in the current collective agreement and the company saying the union's proposals went against the "economic and functional viability" of its operation, according to the ruling.
One of the union's arguments for higher wages was the sometimes disturbing nature of the Personal Care Centre work.
"The union submits that I should not discount the 'ick' factor of many of the PCC jobs," Mistry said in the ruling.
Embalmers working at one of five preparation tables in PCC's prep room, bathe, dry and disinfect bodies, according to the ruling.
For actual embalming, they inject chemicals into the carotid artery while expelling existing fluids through the jugular vein.
It is "not uncommon" for bodies to be decomposed or severely disfigured or for autopsied bodies to have their "insides" in a separate bag, according to the ruling, and the work often involves smells and visuals an average person would find "unpleasant or perhaps deeply troubling."
Embalmers at PCC embalm up to three bodies a day, the ruling said.
One experienced embalmer who testified at the arbitration hearing said, "We see things that most people don't and some stick with you."
PCC's eight transfer specialists, meanwhile, transport an average of five bodies per shift from wherever they are found and in whatever state, including situations where they have been undiscovered for days or weeks, according to the ruling.
"There is a not insignificant amount of heavy lifting and pulling, as well as physical navigation of awkward spaces involved in the job," stated the ruling.
One transfer specialist who testified said she had "seen it all," including decomposition, maggots, bugs, bodily fluids such as blood, urine and feces, as well as swaths of skin slipping off the body, according to the ruling.
Mistry said the work involves elements a person outside of the job would find "disturbing, if not horrifying."
But the job also requires tact and sensitivity because transfer specialists interact with "all manner of people," including bereaved people whose emotions can range from "gratefulness to inebriation and 'screaming in the hallway,'" according to the ruling.
Mistry said it was not his role to assess wage entitlements on the basis of the PCC jobs' unpleasantness alone, but he agreed with the union that the nature of the positions could play a part.
"Put more simply, I accept that the pool of workers willing and able to experience such sights and smells may be narrower than for other positions," he said.
But Mistry also noted the process of interest arbitration is a "conservative process" that should "supplement and assist the parties' collective bargaining relationship and not unravel or depart from it."
He said the wage rates of the long unionized Forest Lawn and Ocean View workers were the product of decades of collective bargaining and a ruling that would immediately catch up the newly unionized PCC workers would go against the principle of interest arbitration.
In the end, Mistry ordered new wage rates for the newly unionized employees and ruled on a number of other disputed issues.
Follow Cornelia Naylor on Twitter @CorNaylor
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