Suspension of a union leader, downsizing and precarious financial situation are having a severe impact on maintenance and customer service at Canada’s largest cemetery. A situation which leads to a shower of criticism from relatives of those buried, some of whom would even consider ending the presence of their ancestors on this site, learned The duty.
The tension rose a notch Tuesday between the employer and the office workers of the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery, at the foot of Mount Royal, who held a day of strike to denounce the suspension for five days of the president of their union, Éric Dufault. The latter would have been suspended for his “insubordination”, but the union sees this rather as a response in the context of a labor dispute that has been stretching for five years and revolves around the wages offered to employees.
“Basically, it’s a hammer blow after a situation that should have simply led to a meeting between the boss and the employee,” notes Mr. Dufault in an interview with the To have to. Around him, unionized workers were demonstrating loudly at the entrance to the cemetery on Tuesday.
Several small flags highlighting the short strike of this union were also affixed to the various entrances to this huge cemetery with a large drop. Its members will resume their activities on Wednesday, but the basic problems persist. The number of office workers has fallen from 23 to 18 since 2020, while there are now 93 employees compared to 125 two years ago to maintain this site of more than 139 hectares.
This results in customers disappointed with the maintenance of the graves of their buried relatives and complaints that cannot be taken into account quickly, for lack of sufficient manpower, notes Mr. Dufault. “We are overloaded, it does not provide”, notes the union leader.
Degradation
When passing the To have to Tuesday afternoon, long-time site employees said they had never seen the cemetery in such poor condition. Tall grass and plants overhang several graves, whose engraved names are hidden, while groundhog burrows are multiplying all over the site, plunging many relatives of the deceased into disarray.
“I don’t even want to go to the cemetery anymore, because it saddens me so much,” says Karine Payton, whose mother was buried in this cemetery ten years ago. The last time she visited this site, she says, she no longer even recognized her mother’s grave, hidden by the greenery. She also notes that the upkeep of this cemetery, which she once considered “beautiful”, has continued to deteriorate over time, especially this year.
“It’s degrading,” adds M.me Payton, whose sister confided in an interview that she had tried in vain in recent months to have her complaints heard by the cemetery administration. Another lady, met in the aisles on Tuesday afternoon, burst into tears when we asked her about the poor maintenance of the premises, which she described as “lack of respect” for the relatives of the deceased.
“Honestly, it’s pathetic. I was shocked, as a citizen, ”says the independent councilor in Ville-Marie, Serge Sasseville, whose all deceased relatives were buried in this cemetery, where the family has had a lot since 1914. It was when he wanted to pay tribute earlier this month to his spouse who died in 2018 when he noticed the poor maintenance of “the largest cemetery in Montreal”.
“This year, I noticed that I have never seen the cemetery in this state,” notes the elected official, who intends to raise this issue in mid-September during the next meeting of the Table de concertation du mont Royal, of which he is a member.
In this context, the cemetery’s office workers are receiving an increasing number of calls from people who want to move the bodies of their loved ones to another cemetery in order to then sell their lot to the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery in a process of ” retrocession”, learned The duty. “The volume of calls is much more present” concerning such requests, affirms Mr. Dufault. “It’s accounted for. “Information that the cemetery was unable to validate on Tuesday.
“The financial situation will never improve with the abandonment of customers and the cemetery”, adds the union leader, who reports a “vicious circle” in which this cemetery, which opened in 1854, is plunged. .
“Green Plan” which leaves you perplexed
While criticism accumulates on social networks and the voicemail of employees of the cemetery office, the latter argues that he is only applying the “green plan” he has put in place with a view to sustainable development in 2021. This includes plans to gradually replace the lawns of the site with “a meadow of native plants”.
“Inevitably, there are fewer lawns that are mowed than before. We let the vegetation grow more”, argues the spokesperson for the cemetery, Daniel Granger, who believes “that there is an education to be done with people” concerning this ecological approach.
Unionized employees, however, reply that this “green plan” serves rather as a pretext to reduce the number of maintenance employees in a context where this cemetery recorded losses totaling nearly $103 million between 2008 and 2019, i.e. approximately 8.6 million per year. “The green plan is sham,” says Éric Dufault.
Joined by The duty, the president of the Association of Christian Cemeteries of Quebec, François Chapdelaine, points out that many cemeteries in the province find themselves having to deal with “a stronger ecological sensitivity” while meeting the expectations of their customers. “It’s not always easy,” he says. As for the financial challenges, these can lead to a reduction in opening hours, even a reduction in the maintenance of the premises in some cemeteries, he notes, but few are those who are threatened with closure. “We have a duty of sustainability. »