by CORIANDER NEUMANEIMANAYMANEEMAMANN, Alternate Reality News Service Labour Writer
Ordinarily, the hunchback and hatchback crowd are found in cemeteries in the middle of the night, scavenging corpses for body parts to complete the depraved scientific experiments of their not especially praved masters. On this night, however, many of them can be found outside the head office of Stewart Enterprises, Inc., carrying placards that read "Over our dead bodies!" and "Who are the real ghouls here? No, really? Do I need to define the term fo" and chanting, in a low moaning kind of way, "Hell, no, stop the pros!" More whiny than mournful, really. And, out of synch. They could definitely use a conductor.
They are members of the IUI (International Union of Igors), Local Ninety-seven, and, as uncomfortable as it may be for people who have been raised to obey their masters, they are pissed.
The Igors, about a dozen strong (and six or seven weak) are protesting the fact that funeral homes are now offering discounts to customers who are willing to sign over some organs to scientists. Aside from being inherently ghoulish, they claim it undermines the work of union members.
"Look at it from an Igor's point of view," stated IUI Local Ninety-seven Steward Victoria "Igor" Frankenstein (distant relation, but, for purposes of this article, irrelevant). "You go to all the trouble to dig up the coffin of somebody who has recently been deceased, only to find the best bits are missing! What do you do? Do you go back to your master and explain what happened? Do you have any idea how many lashings the union contract allows for under those circumstances? Or, do you dig up the corpse of somebody who has maybe been in the ground a little longer, who is maybe not so...ripe for harvesting? I think we all know how that turns out!"
When I asked Gerhardt Schmoulian, Public Relations Officer, Third Class how Stewart Enterprises, one of the biggest funeral home chains in the greater east-western area, viewed the union protests, he looked puzzled and said, "We're being picketed by a union?"
One of the reasons the protests appear to have gotten little traction is that they have, to date, all been held - if I may use the term - in the dead of night, when the offices are empty and the media has been tucked into its beds and are dreaming their little dreamy dreams. "Be fair," Frankenstein explained. "Midnight to 5pm are our members' customary working hours. Get them out off their slabs any earlier, and they will be sluggish and disoriented...not, perhaps, much different from their usual state, I will allow. Still, their sluggishness and disorientation will be unmotivated, and that does make a difference."
When I asked Schmoulian about this, he said, "Really?" After a moment's pause, he added, "No, really?"
The IUI, the AFL-CIO's younger, scruffy, somewhat disreputable cousin, has over 2,000 members worldwide, although over 90% of them are located in the Balkans or small hamlets in England.
"By the way," said Igor Frankenstein (who claims that she really has nothing to do with her distant relation, that she hasn't been in touch with that side of the family in years, but, for purposes of this article, we will assume that she isn't being entirely forthright - we mean, how could she not?), "let me just point out that having a hunchback is no longer a requirement of membership in the Union. That may have been true 100 years ago, but in the 1970s we were hit with a Labour Relations Board ruling that that discriminated against the able-bodied, so we now have to take in anybody engaged in middle-of-the-night necrocriminal behaviour, regardless of their firmity."
Igor Frankenstein asked us to forget about our preconceived notions and please focus on the issue at hand. "This is just another example of how big corporate conglomerates are squeezing out the little guy," she editorialized. "I mean, what we're talking about here is a family business. The unbearable lightness of being an Igor is usually passed down from father to son, sort of like Listeriosis and Dutch Elm's Tongue."
Frankenstein pointed out that if funeral homes were allowed to make their offer unchallenged, it wouldn't be a loss just to her union's members, but to all of society: "Over the centuries, Igors have developed a body of knowledge about cadaver removal and involuntary post-rigor amputation that deserves as much respect as astrology, or...or aura research!"
When I explained the whole Igor legitimacy thing to Schmoulian, he replied, "Reeeeaaaaallly?" We're sure he meant that the company took the protests seriously and would be happy to enter into negotiations with the appropriate union rep. But, he just looked kind of blankly at us, almost like an Igor, truth be told, and incredulously moaned, "Reeeeaaaaallly?"