Article via: Businessweek.com
Here’s something you don’t see every day: Jewish protesters marched outside the headquarters of the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday carrying (empty) coffins and chanting, “We can’t afford to die with SCI.” Got your attention, right?
Synagogues and Jewish community groups around Washington, D.C., mounted this unusual demonstration to oppose a pending merger between the two largest funeral chains in the U.S. The proposed acquisition by Service Corporation International (SCI) of its closest rival,Stewart Enterprises (STEI), would lead to higher prices for Jewish funerals in and around the nation’s capital, according to the unhappy activists.
“The FTC must act now to keep traditional Jewish funerals affordable and protect members of our community from the distasteful price-gouging that often occurs when mourners are making decisions about final arrangements at an incredibly vulnerable time,” said Joe Sandler, the president of the Jewish Community Relations Council, in a press release. For photos of the demonstration, click here.
Bloomberg Businessweek readers will recall a recent cover story on the funeral industry, focusing on how SCI is driving consolidation in that traditionally fragmented sector. In many urban areas where it has acquired clusters of funeral homes and cemeteries, SCI has charged higher prices than independently owned rivals. The article described the anxiety in Jewish circles about the SCI-Stewart merger:
Forty-five synagogues in the Washington area have a group contract with a Stewart-owned funeral home in suburban Silver Spring, Md., that provides a traditionally modest Jewish ceremony (plain wooden box, no viewing or flowers) for less than $2,000. “If SCI takes over Stewart, we expect the prices to go up because SCI’s other two funeral homes in the immediate vicinity charge from $5,000 to $10,000 for a Jewish ceremony,” Rudolph says. “Size brings economies of scale. Who benefits from economies of scale is another question.”
[SCI spokeswoman Lisa] Marshall says SCI will honor the Washington-area Jewish group’s option to renew its low-cost contract until 2016. “After that,” she adds, “we’ll certainly want to rebid the contract and hope to keep it, of course at a market-competitive price. I don’t see what all the fuss is about.”
Marshall didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment on the protest at the FTC. The agency has been investigating the proposed Stewart acquisition, which SCI has said it hopes to complete by early 2014.
Why are the Jewish Funeral Directors the only ones protesting. How about the rest of us Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopal, etc., SCI rapes everyone including their employees. When the will the FTC stop this, stop catering to WALL STREET, SCI is a Monopoly and no one wants to do something about it. Maybe every staff member shouldn’t show up for work, and paralyze the entire company. However, the first thing someone is going to say, is that the family shouldn’t suffer………….well guess what they already are. STOP SCI.
I agree with you. Trouble is the rank and file FD’s must think if this merger doesn’t involve them, it’s not their business. This merger is bad from the families to all funeral service employees, especially licensed personnel. SCI and Stewart are already too big. If you worked for SCI and got fired, terminated or quit under duress for any reason and ended up on their “no rehire list” like me and you go to work for say an independent funeral home that might get bought out in an acquisition anytime in the future…guess what? once SCI takes over the location you will be ushered into an office and prob lose your job and the new place you once thought you were safe at, you are now a direct target for termination and back on the street. SCI did this to a friend of mine in PA after leaving an SCI location in Charlotte. On top of that, Funeral Directors will find it increasingly difficult to find gainful employment with this consolidation should it occur. Look how many funeral openings on Monster, NFDA.org or funeralnet.com are posted. And that’s just a couple of job-boards. I’ve worked in the funeral “profession”,(yes, I use that term loosely) for 25 years and it is only getting worse, not better. I hope this merger fails and big but I won’t bet on it after these cronies get their lobbyists to pay (somehow bribe) off the FTC. I would love to see a nationwide FD work stoppage but a union would be best in the long-term and would probably help correct some of the tilted ship but that won’t happen either. I would gladly join a FD union for better representation in our industry.