As 200 bodies have accumulated at a burial ground due to a strike by maintenance and clerical workers at Montreal’s Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery, TVA Nouvelles has learned that the families of the deceased are now demanding the employer call the courts unionized Forcing employees to return to work.
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The families believe that applying for a restraining order is the best way to end this conflict and to ease the suffering of loved ones of people who have died, some of whom have been dead for several months, and whose burial is still awaited.
Remember that the strike was called on January 12, halting all activity to bury the dead “with honor and dignity,” bereaved families say.
According to the spokesman for the Association for the Defense of the Rights of the Deceased and Families of the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery, Paul Caghassi, the cemetery must act quickly as it will be banned from the mass storage of remains after May 15.
“Under the Funeral Activities Act, the cemetery is subject to a daily fine of $1,500 to $4,500 for each of the remains not cremated or buried.”
They estimate the fines could range from $450,000 to $1.3 million per day.
Mr Caghassi also invites grieving families to submit complaints to the Inspection and Investigations Branch of the Department of Health and Human Services.