A fresh, open grave at Beth Israel Cemetery in Woodbridge Township, New Jersey.
A flooded and collapsed grave at Beth Israel Cemetery.
A gravesite dated April 24, 2020, the peak of the Coronavirus outbreak in New Jersey and New York City. The grave was still missing a headstone when this photo was taken in July.
During the pandemic, Joe Redling, StoneMor’s CEO—and former CEO of AOL International—agreed to give up half of his base salary for 10 weeks, amounting to two percent of the $3.3 million he earned in 2019. Meanwhile, Beth Israel workers say StoneMor refused to provide them hazard pay, and took weeks to offer eye protection and hand sanitizer even though workers were handling the remains of presumed COVID-19 victims that had not been embalmed, as dictated by Jewish practice. StoneMor denied the claim in its statement but declined to provide any proof or information about when workers last got a raise, whether they got hazard pay, and when they got PPE.
In an OSHA complaint, Beth Israel workers allege that the cemetery's machinery is woefully out of date. (Photo included in an OSHA complaint)
The OSHA complaint includes photos of oil leaks, rusted and heavily dented pickup trucks, and broken machinery, a lack of working machinery has led workers to have to hand-shovel graves that cannot be dug with backhoes and lifting grave-boards. (Photo included in an OSHA complaint)
Many of the toppled headstones are marked with “endowed” stickers, meaning families had paid thousands of dollars for either five years or a lifetime of care.
An interior block at Beth Israel Cemetery
Beth Israel Cemetery is a final resting place for many survivors of Nazi concentration camps and members of Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish congregations from South Williamsburg and other Brooklyn neighborhoods.
Motherboard sent photo evidence of the toppled headstones to StoneMor; it declined to comment.
Last March, gravediggers at Beth Israel and the neighboring StoneMor-owned cemetery Cloverleaf voted to unionize with Teamsters Local 469, joining at least 19 other unionized cemeteries owned by StoneMor in the United States. Workers wanted to push back against understaffing, dilapidated equipment, and stagnant wages with the power of a union behind them. None of Beth Israel’s unionized workers, including some who earn $13.50 an hour, have gotten a raise in three years, according to the union. StoneMor declined to provide any specific proof or documentation that would refute this.Later that month, the company laid off seven union members and fired a pro-union superintendent from Beth Israel and two neighboring cemeteries owned by StoneMor, spreading the remaining grave diggers even thinner, according to a complaint filed by Local 469 with the NLRB.During and after the union drive, StoneMor distributed anti-union flyers to workers and mailed letters to their homes, repeatedly urging them to "vote no." In a flyer posted on a bulletin at the cemetery titled "What Local 469 Won't Tell You," management wrote, "You Can't Trust Local 469. Its Promises are Empty. Vote No! Keep Your Money." In another flyer distributed to workers after the union election and obtained by Motherboard with the title "StoneMor 2.0," managers wrote, "StoneMor has a whole new structure and a whole new team of leaders… Don't trust a union stranger."
In an OSHA complaint, Beth Israel workers allege that the cemetery's machinery is woefully out of date. According to the complaint, which included photos of oil leaks, rusted and heavily dented pickup trucks, and broken machinery, a lack of working machinery has led workers to have to hand-shovel graves that cannot be dug with backhoes and lifting grave-boards. According to the complaint, many of the trucks are out of service.
“Insufficient exhaust in vehicles leads to carbon monoxide in the cab of vehicles,” the OSHA complaint, filed in March, alleges. (Photo included in an OSHA complaint)

