What happens to funerals as the middle class disappears in this country and as the best union jobs and pensions dwindle and break and fall by the wayside or crumble under the weight of corporate bankruptcy? Has anyone realistically answered this question? I don’t think anyone has begun to notice but we all must pay attention or OUR plans for the future may get downsized just like so many of these manufacturing jobs.
For me this issue has remained out of site and out of mind. Most of the large scale manufacturing (in our case cloth and garment production) left Fall River, Massachusetts decades ago. A few remnants have hung on and Quaker Fabric (a supplier of high end brocades and automotive fabrics) has done okay up till recently. Even they have started posting red numbers quarter after quarter, and with the American auto manufacturers struggling with high gas prices and other competitive pressures, I expect that Quaker will stumble soon as well.
Still this bankruptcy filing by Delphi the huge auto parts producer finally got my attention. What we see is the un-official social contract between large manufacturing companies and their workers thoroughly falling apart. In the process, many financial pressures formerly picked up by corporations such as Delphi and Bethlehem Steel and some of the airline companies will fall right in the laps of retirees. Most of these folks will not have a plan to cover increased co-pays and the other costs previously covered by retiree health plans and other retirement benefits.
As funeral professionals we need to see that a sizable group of those early baby boomers, that we have counted on to show up in the next few years and fuel the financial future of funeral service, will show up much poorer than any of us expected. They may exhaust their resources much sooner in life and not have the wherewithal to pay for the elaborate ceremonies and the accompanying accoutrements such as caskets and vaults and all the rest. Those families that have for years represented the heart and soul of funeral service; solid, hardworking, church going, community oriented folks who gather in numbers to remember and grieve together; may not have the resources available to keep up with our own increased cost of doing business.
I haven’t the resources to finance the kind of survey work necessary to detail this issue properly. Nevertheless, it is not hard to imagine a serious challenge to funeral service from these changes in our communities and culture. Therefore, we need to get this dramatic financial shift onto the radar screen of our national association groups. They certainly have the resources to hire the right research firm to sort through and project some outcomes.
At the very least, this economic shift will drive cremation even faster than before. It may also challenge assumptions about preneed. Watch those multi-pay contracts you have out among the families who made a living from the big manufacturing companies. The default rates may go up and in the process consumer satisfaction may go way down. Think again about major expansions and facility upgrades particularly in Rust Belt suburbs. The cash-flow you expect will pay for it may not come through in full and leave YOU in the position of cutting benefits for YOUR employees (which may very well be you).
We have tended to shrug our shoulders and say, “We’ve always gotten through these things before.” Take careful stock of that statement. True, we have seen some recessions and reorganizations of corporations before. Still, this time is different. The real bread and butter companies have hit PERMANENT hard times AND we have never had this many people entering their retirement years as the baby boomers are beginning to do right now. Yes, many baby boomers went on to make lots of money working in fancier places than a GM assembly plant. Thing is, those more highly educated boomers will not pay for traditional funerals, they won’t need them. It was the manufacturing middle class that would fund our future and it appears that future may have been taken away.
We need to ask the right questions and we need to plan accordingly. Times have already changed and these changes will affect all of us in the amount we will have to retire, the value of our businesses and the kinds of services we get to perform for families. Don’t miss this. Your future depends upon it.
BT
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