In the B&H photo video, some on-duty employees fear that they have recently lost their jobs for good – and claim that they reported unsafe working conditions during a coronavirus outbreak.
After workers complained in March that the epidemic was being re-managed by the company – including indoor prayer services filled for its ultra-religious Jewish workers – some workers have looked like post-online postings for their jobs. It is a condition in which they would not be, they suspect, if they were part of the inner circle of the company’s Hasidic Jewish employees, who say they receive special treatment.
“They definitely used Covid as a cover to get some of us away,” said Dan Wagner, a nearly six-year-old p ran from a well-known New York tech retailer known for his conveyor-belt system of business transactions around his three-story. Megastore on West 34th Street and 9th Avenue.
Wagner, a professional photographer who has worked as a product description writer for B&H, says he believes he has not been asked to work again since he complained about the daily prayer services held in the company’s lunch rooms in March.
“I told HR that people should not gather,” Gner said, adding that B&H later announced in a newsletter that two workers who had been praying had died of the virus in late March.
Wagner repeatedly pressed B and H for information after he learned a fellow employee on the second floor had been infected with the virus, he said. “I believe they retaliated against me for asking if they were in close contact with anyone with Kovid.”
B&H content writer William Cannon says he believes they were not brought back because he sought permission to work from home in March. I said [HR] That I don’t feel safe in office fees, put in a full elevator and work with others, “Kane said.
Canon, also known as Diabetes, was also harassed by the prayer services because he was kept in the same room where he kept his insulin, which needed to be made in the refrigerator. “There were a lot of people and I have to put my foot on them to get to the refrigerator,” he said. “It was upsetting for me.”
B&H told Cannon to use his payment time until the home plan came from work, which he did about a week later. “The B&H epidemic was too slow to take seriously,” he said. “I took all my PTO days because they have no plans.”
Cannon and Wagner say they were surrounded on April 27 by about 400 other workers – about 20 percent of B&H’s employees. The company notified the workers by e-mail that they would be paid for 2.5 days and would receive health benefits on May 31.
Cannon had been unable to pay for his insulin medication since June and was forced to share insulin with his diabetic uncle, with whom he lives.
Then in August, after months of no communication from the company, Kane saw an Ost.com posting for Mobile Tech Consumer Writer for B&H, which he did for the company. The posting also called for gaming skills, which Cannon says his manager knows he has.
“These people took it as their way of getting rid of people they didn’t want,” he said of the job postings. “It simply came to our notice then. It seems like a way to let people go without telling them. “
Wagner, meanwhile, saw two listings for his job as a photography writer on the company’s web site, most recently on October 15.
B&H didn’t tell the men what their plans were, nor did they ask, but the megastore reopened on July 1 for ins and outs.
After the furloughs came down, Wagner e-mailed his B&H managers to ask what percentage of Hasidic employees had been laid off the company refused to specify. At a time when Wagner, who is Jewish but not Hasidic, says he has filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission alleging that B&H discriminates against Hasidic employees.
Cannon, who is African-American, said he, too, is considering filing a discrimination complaint against B&H.
Wagner declined to share a copy of his complaint with The Post, but did share an e-mail with the agency to show he had filed one.
B&H, which Blimey and Hermann Schreiber opened in 1973, declined to comment on the job listing or Wagner’s complaint of discrimination, except that it “welcomes the EEOC’s findings.”
Jeff Gerstle, the company’s chief marketing officer, told The Post in a statement that BRH was one of the last retailers of Furlow employees.
“As we navigate these challenging times we proudly bring Furlong employees to work every week. We cannot answer individual employee matters. ”
Wagner claims that B&H’s Hasidic Jewish employees get special permission, in which he believes the company-sponsored shuttle buses help them get to and from work.
The shuttles, which cost employees a 2.75 per cent, are not offered to non-Hasidic employees, he said.
B&H declined to comment on its role in providing buses, but a person close to the company noted that the retailer was named New York’s 14th best employer in 2020 by Forbes in August.
The popular retailer has twice been discriminated against by the federal government, most recently in 2016 when the Labor Department accused Hispanic men of hiring Hispanic men for entry-level positions at their former Brooklyn Navy warehouse and then harassing them. . Inadvisable conditions, including inefficient bathrooms, were different from the companies used by non-Hispanic workers in the facility. The complaint also alleges the company did not keep women, black and Asian workers at the Brooklyn facility, after which it has moved to New Jersey.
The family-owned business “clearly denied” the 2016 allegations, but paid 3. 3.22 million to settle the case and “avoid litigation”, it said at the time.
Legal experts like Caroline Richmond say they have been warning employers since April to be careful not to discriminate when retiring on-duty workers.
Richmond, chairman of Fox Rothschild LLP’s Hospitality Practice Group, said: “The question is why the employer does not bring back an employee who was not allowed to do the job due to cowardly restrictions. “Certainly these workers are suspected of being replaced by new hires.”
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