The Workers Trapped in the Pet Cremation Monopoly

Gateway Services forced hourly workers who operate cremation machines and pick up dead pets from veterinary clinics to sign contracts that banned them from finding any job in their industry anywhere in the entire United States for a full year — and then, in some cases, closed the facility they worked at just weeks later.

One Company Runs American Pet Cremation

When your dog or cat dies, you probably do not think about who handles the cremation. Gateway Services, Inc. does not need you to think about it. The Canadian-headquartered corporation has quietly built a stranglehold on the American pet aftercare industry, operating over 100 locations and serving 17,000 customers across North America. That scale is not accidental — it is the product of aggressive acquisition of smaller competitors.

Gateway employs 1,992 people in the United States. The workers doing the actual physical labor — the people running the crematory equipment, molding clay paw prints as keepsakes for grieving families, and driving vans to pick up deceased animals from vet clinics — are called Operations Team Members and Customer Service Representatives. These are hourly workers. These are the people Gateway decided needed to be legally caged.

The FTC complaint describes Gateway as “by far the largest pet cremation services company in the United States.” In an industry built on intimate moments of grief, one corporation holds the keys to almost every door in the country.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What a Cage Costs a Worker

The FTC complaint focuses on legal violations, but the real story lives in the daily reality of the 1,780 workers who signed those non-competes. Picture an Operations Team Member: someone who shows up to a cremation facility, loads equipment, handles the remains of someone’s beloved companion animal with care, and at the end of a shift goes home smelling like the job. This is skilled, emotionally demanding, physically intense work. Gateway classified it as hourly. Then Gateway handed these workers a contract that said: if you ever leave us, you cannot work in this industry anywhere in the country for a year.

That clause is a financial gun pointed at the worker’s livelihood. Pet cremation is a specialized trade. The people doing it have developed skills, industry contacts, and professional reputations that are specific to this field. A one-year, nationwide ban on working in your own industry means a year of starting over. A year of taking whatever job will have you. A year of watching your savings drain while the company that fired you, or that you escaped, continues operating without you — and without any real competitor able to hire you either.

“The Non-Compete Agreements likely cause lower wages and salaries, reduced benefits, less favorable working conditions, and, among other things, personal hardship to employees.”

— Federal Trade Commission Complaint, paragraph 15

The FTC’s language about “personal hardship” is bureaucratic understatement for a human catastrophe. Workers under non-competes cannot walk into a negotiation with their employer from a position of power. If Gateway offers them a lousy raise or worsening conditions, the worker’s only leverage is to quit — and quitting means being legally barred from their own trade for twelve months. The agreement does not just restrict their future; it compresses their present. It makes them cheaper and more compliant than they would otherwise be, because the cost of walking away is enormous.

The scope of this particular agreement makes it especially predatory. Gateway did not limit the non-compete to a city, a state, or even a region. The agreements barred workers from the pet cremation industry anywhere in the United States. For a company operating over 100 locations, a nationwide ban is a de facto life sentence for anyone who wants to stay in their chosen field. It forecloses the ability to move to a different city for a fresh start, to get poached by a regional competitor, or to open a small local operation. Every door, everywhere, closes at once.

Former Gateway employees who tried to open their own pet cremation businesses discovered the full weight of this trap. The FTC complaint notes that some former workers “attempted to enter the pet cremation services industry despite high entry barriers.” Non-competes were one more wall stacked on top of an already difficult climb. These are people who learned a trade, decided to bet on themselves, and found that the largest player in the industry had legally pre-empted their ambition.

There is also a profound psychological dimension to working under a non-compete in a grief-services industry. Pet cremation workers are not assembling widgets; they handle the remains of animals that families loved deeply. They interact with grieving veterinarians and grieving owners. Doing that work well requires emotional investment. Gateway harvested that investment, extracted the labor, and then signed paperwork saying those workers’ next year of professional life belonged to Gateway’s competitive interests. The contract converted human dignity into a corporate asset.

Legal Receipts: Gateway’s Own Words Are the Indictment

The FTC complaint does not rely on inference. Gateway’s internal communications, cited directly in the government’s filings, reveal a company that understood exactly what it was doing and chose to do it anyway. These are the receipts.

“Gateway viewed non-competes as still ‘[n]ice to have’ for potential employees it might acquire as part of a transaction in markets where it was ‘likely to consolidate operations and let employees go.'” FTC Complaint, Paragraph 11 — Gateway’s own internal communications

“Gateway ‘[s]trongly preferred’ Non-Compete Agreements for potential employees it might acquire as part of a transaction in competitive markets while considering these agreements ‘[n]ice to have’ in other markets based on its assessment that ‘competitors in [those] markets are at a smaller scale and less of a threat so [Gateway] could get comfortable with the risk’ of not having Non-Compete Agreements.” FTC Complaint, Paragraph 12 — Gateway’s competitive calculus, in writing

“Even if we fire our sales person and give [the newly acquired employee] the position, it doesn’t prevent [the newly acquired] sales person from jumping ship or being solicited by a competitor (now, next yr, or at another point in time). In fact, if they are that good, there’s more of a reason to get the non-compete/non-solicit because that risk will always be there. At some point, we’ll have to deal with the competitive concerns which will cost $.” FTC Complaint, Paragraph 13 — Gateway internal communication on why non-competes serve competitive suppression, not employee or consumer protection

“Gateway recognizes that Non-Compete Agreements for employees reduce competitive pressures.” FTC Complaint, Paragraph 12 — The government’s direct finding of Gateway’s own stated purpose

“In one instance, Gateway had employees at a facility enter Non-Compete Agreements only to close the facility weeks later and terminate the employees.” FTC Complaint, Paragraph 11 — The single most damning sequence of events in the entire complaint

That last one deserves to sit without commentary for a moment. Gateway gathered workers, asked them to sign documents restricting their professional freedom for an entire year, and then fired them weeks later when it closed the facility. There is no legitimate business interest being protected in that sequence. There is only control.

Societal Impact Mapping

Economic Inequality: The Monopoly Tax on Grief

Non-compete agreements are already more common among higher earners, where they occasionally serve some genuine business rationale around trade secrets or client relationships. Gateway obliterated that distinction entirely. The FTC complaint is explicit: Gateway applied its non-compete policy “without any individualized consideration of an employee’s role,” covering “both highly compensated executives and hourly workers.” The hourly workers — Operations Team Members and Customer Service Representatives — account for the majority of affected employees. This is a policy designed for maximum control, not targeted protection.

The economic damage compounds at every level. Individual workers face suppressed wages and reduced ability to negotiate, because their only real leverage — the ability to walk out and work for a competitor — has been legally stripped away. Local labor markets suffer because Gateway’s non-competes impede the entry of competing businesses, keeping prices high for veterinarians and, ultimately, for pet owners paying for cremation services. The FTC notes that non-competes “impede the entry and expansion of Gateway’s competitors,” meaning the company’s labor contracts function as a market-wide fence, not just an employee-management tool.

Between January 2020 and October 2023, Gateway closed dozens of cremation facilities across the United States. In those markets, Gateway was often already the dominant or only large-scale provider. When it closed facilities, it left a service gap. Workers who could have filled that gap by opening independent operations or joining smaller competitors were legally blocked from doing so for a year. Gateway’s non-competes did not just harm the workers directly; they harm every community that lost cremation service capacity when Gateway pulled out and then kept anyone qualified from stepping in.

Public Health: The Invisible Stakes in Pet Aftercare

Pet cremation is not a luxury industry. Proper handling and disposal of deceased animals is a public health concern: improper practices carry disease risk, environmental contamination risk, and the specific psychological harm to families who trusted a provider to handle a loved animal’s remains responsibly. The concentration of this service in a single dominant company, reinforced by labor practices that prevent the emergence of competitors, reduces accountability in an industry where accountability is difficult for the average grieving pet owner to assess.

When workers in a specialized grief-services industry cannot move to competitors or open independent businesses, the quality feedback loop breaks down. Experienced workers who develop better practices, more humane approaches, or higher standards cannot use that expertise to build alternatives. Gateway’s non-competes lock institutional knowledge inside one corporation, deprive the market of the benefits of that expertise spreading through the industry, and leave pet owners with fewer options to choose providers who have earned better reputations from former Gateway workers.

A Timeline of Control: How Gateway Built the Trap

The Cost of a Life Metric

What Now? The People Accountable and the Pressure Points

Corporate Entities Named in the Federal Complaint

• Gateway Services, Inc. — Parent corporation, organized in Canada, headquartered in Guelph, Ontario. The policy originated here.
• Gateway US Holdings, Inc. — Wholly owned U.S. subsidiary, incorporated in Delaware, headquartered in Cranston, Rhode Island. U.S. operations flow through this entity.

Regulatory Bodies with Jurisdiction

• Federal Trade Commission (FTC) — Already acting. The complaint was filed November 25, 2025. This is an active proceeding. Watch for the consent order.
• State Attorneys General — Most states have independent consumer protection and labor laws. Workers in affected states should contact their state AG’s office directly.
• Department of Labor (DOL) — The DOL has ongoing interest in non-compete reform as a wage suppression mechanism.
• State Labor Boards — Workers who signed these agreements and suffered wage suppression or were forced out of their industry have potential state-level claims independent of the FTC action.

If You Are a Gateway Worker

Contact a labor attorney in your state immediately if you signed a non-compete and have left or are considering leaving Gateway. Many states have moved to significantly restrict or void these agreements in recent years, and the FTC’s action creates additional grounds to challenge enforcement. You do not have to accept that contract as a permanent cage.

Connect with worker centers and labor organizing groups in your region. Pet cremation workers are not typically unionized, which is exactly the condition that makes non-competes effective: isolated workers with no collective bargaining power have almost no individual leverage. Collective action — sharing information, organizing, and mutual support networks — is the fastest path to changing conditions on the ground before any regulatory decision takes effect.

Document everything. If Gateway has used or threatened to use a non-compete against you or a coworker, or if you were made to sign one at a facility that subsequently closed, that documentation is evidence. Share it with the FTC, your state attorney general, and worker advocacy organizations. Public regulatory complaints are amplified by the stories of the actual workers behind them.