re: #85 Wendell Zurkowitz ((slave to the waffle light))

Something that the gig economy is not set up to handle…which applies to pretty much ANYTHING related to Covid.

In this case, it’s not the gig economy. The gravediggers are employees of one of the largest cemetery companies in the country.

The allegations against the company include desecration of the graves, not caring for this particular cemetery (people pay extra for “eternal” care but that care of the gravesites is not being provided), flooding of some gravesites from the water table below, collapsed headstones, &c.

The problem is capitalism. The company is consolidating family-owned funeral homes and privately-run cemeteries, then the company is cutting costs. Since the company went live on the Stock Exchange, the price of its shares has collapsed.

The gravediggers allege wage theft of overtime pay, outdated unsafe or polluting equipment, &c. They’ve filed cases with New Jersey, OSHA, and EPA.

When family members call the company which runs the Jewish cemetery to complain about conditions, “there’s nothing we can do.”

There’s also nothing the federal government will do, so long as it’s run by conservatives.

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By contrast, the single cemetery in my town is owned by the village government. (Well, it’s not actually in town, it’s about a mile north, but the cemetery is part of the incorporated village.)

All care for the cemetery is paid for in the village budget. Gravediggers aren’t employed there but are paid as needed (and much more than what the gravediggers are at that Jewish cemetery in New Jersey are).

There are no toppled headstones, no water boiling up into graves (that can be a problem in any cemetery but there are measures which can be employed to avoid that … which the company running the cemetery in New Jersey isn’t doing because that cuts into corporate profits), no overgrown gravesites with weeds, &c.

If any of that did happen in our town cemetery, the cemetery board and the village board would be strung up.