Montreal cemetery workers will study new management offer

Union negotiators for locked-out gravediggers and maintenance workers at a Montreal cemetery say they will study a new management offer and show it to workers on Saturday.

Management at Notre-Dame-des-Neiges made the new offer in hopes of ending a dispute with 125 of its workers that began May 16. The union has been without a contract since 2003.

Talks between the two sides resumed on Monday,supervised by government-appointed conciliator Denis Giasson.

This was the seventh round of discussion and it came partly in response to a call last week byMontreal's archbishop, Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte, for a prompt end to the lockout.

No bodies have been buried since the workers were locked out in May. They are being kept in cold storage.

Families waiting to bury their relatives have launched a $6-million class action lawsuit against the cemetery, saying more and more of the deceased are being locked in refrigeration tanks, while gravesites go untended.

The lockout started after contract negotiations over work conditions and pension issues ended without a new agreement.

The cemetery is the final resting place for notables such as the late hockey legend Maurice Richard and former Quebec premier Robert Bourassa.