Co-op

Over at the Guardian’s ethical living blog they’ve put the Co-op under the spotlight.You ask, they answer from now til Friday.

Well, of course, oh yes, I have been asking (under my moniker of raggedexile, adopted when I was living in joyous penury on the guano-spattered Isle of Portland).

Have at them! Good sport! Make em wriggle!

I was pretty rude last week about AB Walker and Son. Having been so, I fired off an email to Julian Walker offering a platform for a riposte.

Within a few days I had a reply. It was a cheery reply, a generous reply: the reply of a man who is confident but not at all arrogant, not a bit of it. “Congratulations,” he said, “on your move to push for more debate, openness, variety and choice of funeral options.” It’s what he wants for his clients, too. He is going to make some changes to his company’s website. He invited me to come and see for myself how his business does things and make a properly informed appraisal. I had already rather supposed that AB Walker and Son is a very good business, and several people have written to tell me that that is exactly what it is. But I shall certainly pay a visit. It is always good to spend time with people to whom funerals really matter.

How very different from the home life of our own, dear Co-operative Funeralcare. Judging by their reluctance to respond to stinging criticism and regular exposure of their worst inadequacies, they seem to regard themselves as immune from consumer examination, a juggernaut armour-plated by the bullshit they pay PR and advertising people to plaster them with. It’s unaccountable. I think they’re too smart to be rated stupid. If they had a really good story to tell about themselves they would fall over themselves to tell it. But they don’t. It’s money that does their talking. Funeralcare is expanding so fast it must reckon itself unstoppable. It’s a bit like the tanks rumbling into Tiananmen Square.

Do big chains of funeral directors provide the service and value you can get from a really good independent? Mostly, no. Why not? Too big = impersonal. Too greedy. There’re quite a lot of predating venture capitalists out there, you know, gorging on death. For them, funerals are a fast-track to mountains of moolah and they’re devouring independents as fast as they can. What’s a funeral director’s ideal size? Well, there’s no such thing as too small. What’s too big? There’s a topic for another day. Are there some truly awful tiny independents out there? Yes, there truly are. You can’t be too careful.

The sheer nastiness and cruelty of some of the big chains was brought home to me by the experience of a young man whom I shall not name, but whose story I have verified. When the funeral director for whom he worked was bought out,

“the whole company ethos changed, and I found that it was really at odds with my way of caring for and helping the clients. Something had to give. Having obstructed and objected to almost all of the new ways of working, I decided I could no longer continue, and began to look for another post with an independent firm. No such post being available in the area, and with my parents’ support, I began to look for premises in which I could open my own funeral home offering the standard of care and service I felt should always be given.”

It wasn’t straightforward. He had signed a non-compete clause with the big chain and undertaken not to open a rival business within 5 miles. He found premises more than five miles away – but more than five miles by road, not as the crow flies. For an undeviating crow the journey was a smidgen under.

“They made my life very difficult and did all in their power to prevent me from opening. I was threatened with high court action, I was followed by their staff, I was photographed going about my business and generally harassed as much as was practical. However, by this stage my mind was made up. After several threats of high court action and the like I felt I had no other negotiating power left so contacted our local newspaper, a reporter was sent to interview me, photographs were taken and a scathing article was written about them. The result – no further communications! Much relieved I began trading. On 1st April I will begin my fifth year’s trading. During the first four years I have been well supported by local families and to date the number of funerals has increased year on year.”

Why the mafia tactics? Inferiority complex, for sure. If you can’t join them, beat them. Up. The guilty company in the case above was the Fairways Partnership, ceo David Hendry. Fairways was bought up in 2006 by Funeralcare, present ceo none other than, you guessed it, the very selfsame David Hendry.

The funeral industry has been subjected to far too little piercing and informed consumer scrutiny. Together, we must change that.

Here is a response from Phil Edwards, Head of Public Relations at The Co-operative, to the stance which The Good Funeral Guide has taken on Co-operative Funeralcare’s derecognition of the GMB union, which I reproduce unmediated. You should read it together with the statement by the GMB.

Dear Mr Cowling,

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to comments made by yourself and Phil Davies from the GMB union in The Good Funeral Guide.

It is now two years since we took the decision to derecognise the GMB. The decision was taken because we need to work with unions which operate across the Group’s range of businesses and have an in-depth understanding of the overall commercial backdrop against which it operates. The GMB had the smallest membership of Funeralcare’s three main non-specialist unions and unlike both Unite and USDAW, had no significant representation in other Co-operative Group businesses. Whilst it is the case that UCATT has fewer members in Funeralcare and does not have members elsewhere in the Group, a sizeable proportion of its membership is made up of stonemasons who are not represented by any other union.

Whilst some 150 funeral workers in Co-operative Funeralcare are in membership of the GMB, more than seven times that number are members of Usdaw within Funeralcare. Usdaw has around 20,000 members across the Co-operative Group.

We fully respect the rights of all of employees to belong to any trade union of their choosing and continue to provide ‘check-off’ facilities in respect of union subscriptions for GMB members. Mr Davies’ claims regarding victimisation of staff are entirely without foundation

The decision was taken with the full backing of the Group’s board and remains final. It is also worth noting that the engagement score of The Co-operative Funeralcare’s staff – a key measure of their commitment to the business – has steadily increased over the last four years and now matches the high level set in other trading sectors of The Co-operative Group. Union membership within Funeralcare is also at an all time high.

Yours sincerely

Phil Edwards

At Teesside crematorium a family is waiting for the coffin containing the body of Olwyn Laidlaw to be carried from the hearse. They are fighting back tears. Then someone comes up to them and says, ‘I don’t know how to tell you this but that’s not your mum. I don’t know how it’s happened.’

Devastating.

The undertaker has brought the wrong coffin.

It takes 40 minutes for Olwyn to be fetched. Luckily, the crem can find a slot for her, but in a different chapel, not the one the family wanted.

Says Olwyn’s daughter, “The whole family has had double the trauma. She was a very loved woman, my mum. A very hardworking woman from Grove Hill. She deserved more.”

No prizes for guessing the name of the undertaker.

Read the sad and sorry story here.

I’ve blogged about Co-op Funeralcare screwups in the past. I have been critical and it has unsettled people. We all screw up sometimes; to err is human. Be a little kinder, people have said (cos remember, you screw up sometimes, too, yes?)

Of course. And I hope I come out with my hands up. But that’s not the point.

Funeralcare, by having derecognised the GMB trade union, is arguably in breach of its foundational principles. Can it therefore claim to be an ethical organisation, of and for the people? I think not. Have I given Funeralcare an opportunity to refute these allegations and wash its clean linen in public? Yes. Frequently.

Silence.

People write and ring and tell me of their awful experiences of Co-op funeral homes. Where there’s a potential law suit to bring I refer them to Teresa Evans. She’s handling a case at the moment.

And, of course, I keep an eye out for the sort of bungling incompetence which looks as it proceeds from systemic poor practice. Here are two examples, both from the Wirral.

In 2006 a widower, Alfred Hutton, went to visit his wife in a Funeralcare funeral home. He found the wrong body in the coffin, dressed in his wife’s clothes. The staff tried to convince him he was mistaken. He knew well enough: the body in the coffin had a full head of hair; his wife had lost hers to chemotherapy. The funeral home only conceded that Mr Hutton was right when the rest of his family came in and agreed with him. Funeralcare then tried to blame the hospital for mixed-up wristbands but the truth came out. Funeralcare waived the bill and claim the matter was settled “amicably”. What an extraordinary adverb. Here’s how Mr Hutton sees it: “Mistakes of this scale are totally unacceptable and cause unbearable stress and anger to families for years after.”

The second example happened on 12 December 2008. Funeralcare staff buried the wrong body. The vicar was sure it was the wrong body, the name on the coffin lid was wrong, but the funeral director said the man had two names. Later that day Funeralcare realised the vicar was right. They summoned extra staff, rushed the right body in its coffin to the burial ground and, having illegally exhumed the wrong one, plonked it in the grave without a funeral ceremony of any kind. The rescued (or wrong) body was given a second funeral a few days later and cremated. The scandal came to light when a Funeralcare staff member’s conscience got the better of him and he confessed to the vicar, who later performed a funeral ceremony for the buried body. Again, Funeralcare settled the matter “amicably” (where on earth do they get that word from?).

If Funeralcare, and the Co-ops generally (there may be exceptions) were proud of what they do and the way they do it they’d proclaim their ownership of every undertaking business they buy out (often with stupid money). They don’t. They hide their name behind that of the original owner. It deceives people.

What does that tell you?

Read the full stories in the Wirral Globe here and here.

Search this blog archive for other F-care screwups.

There’s no rule of thumb that will help us find a good funeral director.

The soulless efficiency of the firm that sells us car insurance suits us very well so long as it’s the cheapest. But when someone has died, what we look for is an intensely personal service, and it naturally seems most likely that we’ll get that from a little independent family business rather than from a branch of one of the conglomerates (Dignity and the Co-ops) or a chain of funeral directors. The big boys know this, they know that the perception is that big equals impersonal and soulless, and that is why, when they acquire a family business, they like to go on trading misleadingly under the old family name.

If they believed that they were doing the best possible job they’d have the confidence to proclaim UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT! The fact that they don’t tells us something, doesn’t it?

And yet, as a great sage of the industry observed to me recently, there are good big ‘uns and bad little ‘uns — and the other way about. Yes, there are some nasty little tykes out there, and some really top-notch branches of the big ‘uns.

We get very few scandals in the UK funeral industry but we do get muddles and screw-ups. It is famous in the industry that these are normally committed by the Co-ops. Here’s an example:

On 1 September this year the funeral for a Leeds woman, a stickler, in life, for punctuality, was arranged by Co-op Funeralcare for 2.20 at Lawnswood crematorium. The hearse and 2 limousines didn’t get to her daughter Kathleen Gamble’s house until 2.40. Fortunately, the crem was able to accommodate the delay. On a busy day, it wouldn’t. Mrs Gamble was furious: “Somebody should be held accountable for making a really sad day for us even more traumatic, emotional and stressful. My mother was never late for anything and then she turned up late to her own funeral.”

There’s Greenwich Mean Time and there’s Funeral Directors’ Time. FDT makes GMT look sloppy and inexact. Funeral directors, you’ll be interested to know, obsess about time. When, on a recent Holby, the cortege for a 12 o’clock funeral pulled up at a quarter to, all the watching undertakers dived behind their sofas, heads in hands. A well run cortege arrives bang on the dot, no earlier, no later. The Co-op’s crime in Leeds was, in funeralworld, well, horrible.

Funeralcare has a multitude of administrative systems designed to make its operation (literally) idiot-proof. In this case, they blamed their howler on a “communication breakdown”. We can only speculate on what really happened. It looks as if the idiots won.

Could the little independent family firm for whose clients I lead funerals have committed such a howler? Absolutely not. How do I know? Because, simply, I know how much they care. Every funeral is, for them, an event, not just another job.

Even a moron-proof admin system will not be proof against an employee who doesn’t care enough or is too busy.

When Funeralcare finally got around to explaining their cock up to Mrs Gamble more than three weeks later, this was her response: “Apparently plans are in place to prevent it from happening again but I just don’t believe them. We feel completely fobbed off and let down.”

We know how she feels. This blog has invited Funeralcare on three occasions to write and tell us about its ethos and, despite promising to do so, it has failed. It is incredible that, given a free opportunity to target consumers, talk about itself and get us all to love it, Funeralcare goes on passing up the chance, falling into contempt and letting down its best employees into the bargain.

To what do we ascribe this? Arrogance? Complacency? Stupidity?

Let’s be kind. Let’s put it down to a “communications breakdown” and hope that “plans are in place to prevent it from happening again”. The only reason why this blog presents a one-sided view of Funeralcare is because they won’t rise to their defence. I believe that there are two sides to this story. Readers will form their own judgement.

For the fourth time I shall now write to Funeralcare, asking them to respond, refute — and advertise for free.

Co-op Funeralcare are always on the lookout for little PR stunts to get a pic + 75 words into the local paper — heart of the community stuff: a little sponsored run here, a coffee morning and open day there, and sixty quid raised for charity. Nothing wrong in that. No one ever got successful by hiding their light under a bushel.

But this blog has its doubts about Funeralcare, principally because its press officer promised to write to allay those doubts. The fact that he resolutely hasn’t means, of course, that doubts persist.

From time to time, they flare up. They did this morning when Dan rang to tell me that, in the ancient kingdom of Fife, John Gilfillan, funeral director at F-care’s Lochgelly and Cowdenbeath branch, has taken to giving local primary school children lessons in road safety. He gives them luminous badges for their uniforms and warns them to be on their guard. The enterprise is supported by Fife Constabulary.

It’s a laudable and community-spirited thing to do — except that Mr Gilfillan wears his undertaker’s garb to school. “I don’t want to frighten them with talk of funerals,” he says.

So why the shuddermaking kit, John?

“I don’t go too deeply into things, or the consequences of road accidents, because there are wee kiddies there,” he says.

Hunh? Pshaw!

When I blogged about FuneralCare derecognising the GMB union I invited the press officer at FCare to respond in the interests of fairness and right to reply.

Phil Edwards of FCare duly responded by email: “This deserves a reply. How much time do we have?”

I told him to take his time. But this was on 21 August, almost a fortnight ago.

I subsequently asked the GMB for any response they would like to make.

Now, the Good Funeral Guide is not a campaigning or a mischief-making publication. But this blog needn’t be quite so buttoned up and well-behaved. Where there is a case to be answered it will fearlessly seek answers, not be brushed aside as if it were a busy flea.

So, Phil, let’s be having you.

While we wait, did you read about Scott Ralston, FCare funeral director in Glasgow with 16 years’ unblemished service, sacked for driving a van with four dead bodies in it, without regard for dignity or respect, at speeds up to 7mph? He’s just won £30,000 at an industrial tribunal, which commented that it could not accept that a reasonable employer would consider this one isolated incident would justify dismissal.

Tsk tsk.

Ethical is the new virtuous. Saints don’t wear haloes any more, they wear little whirling propellers on their roofs to, I don’t know, charge their iPhones, is it?

Ethical living used to be about more than remembering to bring your bag for life to the supermarket or taking as much pride in your compost bin as your new 4×4. Ethical people were less self-righteous, more altruistic.

I’m a sucker for heritage ethics – ethics born of ragged-trousered courage and struggle. The Tolpuddle Martyrs. The Rochdale Pioneers. These are just some of the heroes who float my ethical boat. I suppose it’s this sort of ethical nostalgia which impelled me all those years ago to open an account with smile, the Co-operative Group’s online bank.

I talked last week to John Mallatrat. Do you know John? He and his wife, Mary, founded Peace Funerals in 1996. Mike Jarvis of the Natural Death Centre (sic transit…) once described them to me as latter-day saints, an epithet they would modestly but firmly rebuff. Others must be the judge. I reckon them and their team to possess irrefutable heritage ethical qualities. I first encountered John when I was arranging a funeral for the brother of a friend. He’d died in Hendon and there was very little money available. John, operating out of Sheffield, was able not only to do the funeral for considerably less than the Co-op just outside the gates of the crematorium, he also brought an empathic, personal touch, which established exactly the right tone. It was a wonderful funeral.

Reason for my call: I’d been researching these pay-now-die-later funeral plans which all funeral directors are presently obsessing about as if their future depends on it – which, truth to tell, it urgently does. It seemed to me that there are three significant players: the conglomerates (Dignity and the Co-op); the independents under the banner of Golden Charter; and, way out in left field, Peace, whose Funeral Plans Online are marketed as ethical. What, I wanted to know from John, does he mean by ethical?

It’s not as if anyone supposes that the Co-op’s plan funds porn, nor that the Dignity plan arms the Janjaweed in Darfur. But it’s true to say that they don’t say precisely how they grow their clients’ money that fast, either, and Peace, it turns out, are the only funeral planners who categorically assure their clients that their money will not be invested in armaments, tobacco, alcohol, gambling, human rights abuses or pornography. For people to whom this matters, it’s important to know.

I fell to brooding about ethics in the funeral industry, and what may be seen as a grave betrayal of its founding principles by the Co-operative Group.

This year, at the annual Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival – a gathering of all that’s best about Heritage Labour – the Co-op, direct heirs of the Rochdale Pioneers, were thrown out. Why? Because of the de-recognition by Funeralcare of the GMB union and its alleged victimisation and harassment of its shop stewards.

The Co-op de-recognising a trade union? It’s a bit like discovering that the Church of England has airbrushed the teachings of Jesus from its theology. To carry on trading under the banner of Co-operative looks like, doesn’t it, a species of deception?

It is well known in the funeral industry that the Co-op has bequeathed to this country some of its finest funeral directors. They are those plucky independents who began their careers in the Co-op, where their values and principles were forged in their deep antipathy to the way the Co-op does things. Their zeal is the fruit of their indignation.

It is also well known that there are, within the Co-op, some outstanding and very caring, if grievously underpaid, funeral directors.

You wonder if an organisation so ethically incoherent, which treats its employees so badly, can possibly be an effective force. It would be good to hear a defence.

In the meantime, can anyone out there tell me where I can find an ethical bank?