{"id":92261,"date":"2020-10-19T03:03:23","date_gmt":"2020-10-19T00:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/bh-accused-of-discrimination-by-furloughed-workers\/"},"modified":"2020-10-19T03:03:23","modified_gmt":"2020-10-19T00:03:23","slug":"bh-accused-of-discrimination-by-furloughed-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/bh-accused-of-discrimination-by-furloughed-workers\/","title":{"rendered":"#B&H accused of discrimination by furloughed workers"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#B&H accused of discrimination by furloughed workers<\/strong>”
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\n Some furloughed employees at B&H Photo Video fear that they recently lost their jobs for good \u2014 and claim it\u2019s because they reported unsafe working conditions during the coronavirus outbreak.<\/p>\n

After complaining about the company\u2019s handling of the pandemic back in March \u2014 including packed indoor prayer services for its ultra-religious Jewish workers \u2014 some workers have spotted what look like postings for their jobs online. It\u2019s a position they wouldn\u2019t be in, they suspect, if they were part of the company\u2019s inner circle of Hasidic Jewish staffers, who they say get special treatment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey definitely used COVID as a cover to eliminate some of us,\u201d said Dan Wagner, a nearly six-year veteran of the famed New York tech retailer, which is known for its conveyor-belt system of moving merchandise around its three-story megastore on West 34th Street and Ninth Avenue.<\/p>\n

Wagner, a professional photographer who worked as a product descript<\/a>ion writer for B&H, says he believes he has not been asked back to work after he raised a fuss in March about the daily prayer services, which took place in the company\u2019s lunch rooms.<\/p>\n

\u201cI told HR that people shouldn\u2019t congregate,\u201d Wagner said, adding that B&H later announced in a news<\/a>letter that two workers who had attended the prayers had died from the virus in late March.<\/p>\n

Wagner also repeatedly pressed B&H for information after learning that a fellow staffer on another floor had contracted the virus, he said. \u201cI believe they retaliated against me for simply asking whether I was in close contact with someone with COVID.\u201d<\/p>\n

William Cannon, also a B&H content writer, says he believes he isn\u2019t being brought back because he asked for permission to work from home in March. \u201cI told [HR] that I don\u2019t feel safe at the office, leaving in the packed elevators and working so close to others,\u201d Cannon said.<\/p>\n

Cannon, who is diabetic, was also unnerved by the prayer services because they were held in the same rooms where he kept his insulin, which needs to be refrigerated. \u201cThere were 60 people packed in there and I\u2019d have to step over them to get to the refrigerator,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was uncomfortable for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

B&H told Cannon to use his paid time off until it came up with a work-from-home plan, which it did about a week later. \u201cB&H was very slow to take the pandemic seriously,\u201d he said. \u201cI took all my PTO days because they didn\u2019t have a plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cannon and Wagner say they were furloughed along with about 400 other workers \u2014 about 20 percent of B&H\u2019s staff \u2014 on April 27. The company notified workers via e-mail that they would be paid for 2.5 days and receive health benefits through May 31.<\/p>\n

Cannon has been unable to pay for his insulin medication since June and was forced to share insulin with his diabetic uncle, with whom he lives.<\/p>\n

Then in August, after months of no communication from the company, Cannon saw an Indeed.com posting for a mobile tech consumer writer for B&H, which was what he did for the company. The posting also called for gaming expertise, which Cannon says his manager knows he possesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cI took this as their way of getting rid of the people they didn\u2019t want,\u201d he said of the job posting. \u201cIt was so sudden with no followups. It seemed like a way to lay people off without telling them they were laid off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wagner, meanwhile, saw two listings for his job as photography writer on the company\u2019s Web site<\/a>, most recently on Oct. 15.<\/p>\n

B&H has not told the men either way what its plans are and they have not asked, but the megastore reopened to walk-ins on July 1.<\/p>\n

After the furloughs came down, Wagner e-mailed his B&H managers to ask what percentage of laid off staffers were Hasidic, which the company declined to specify. That\u2019s when Wagner, who is Jewish but not Hasidic, says he filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that B&H discriminates against non-Hasidic employees.<\/p>\n

Cannon, who is African-American, said he, too, is considering filing a discrimination complaint against B&H.<\/p>\n

Wagner declined to share a copy of his complaint with The Post, but has shared e-mails with the agency showing that he filed one.<\/p>\n

B&H, which Blimie and Herman Schreiber opened in 1973, declined to comment on the job listings or Wagner\u2019s discrimination complaint, except to say that it \u201cwelcomes the EEOC\u2019s findings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cB&H was one of the last retailers to furlough employees,\u201d the company\u2019s chief marketing officer, Jeff Gerstel, told The Post in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re proudly bringing back to work furloughed employees every week while we navigate these challenging times. We cannot respond to individual employee matters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wagner claims B&H\u2019s Hasidic Jewish staff get special perks, including what he believes are company-sponsored shuttle buses to help them commute to and from work.<\/p>\n

The shuttles, which cost employees $2.75 a ride, are not offered to non-Hasidic employees, he said.<\/p>\n

B&H declined to comment on its role in providing the buses, but a person close to the company noted that the retailer was named New York\u2019s 14th best employer for 2020 by Forbes in August.<\/p>\n

The popular retailer has been sued twice by the federal government for discriminatory practices, most recently in 2016 when the Department of Labor accused it of only hiring Hispanic men for entry-level positions at its former Brooklyn Navy warehouse, and then subjecting them to harassment and unsanitary conditions, including inoperable bathrooms that were separate from those used by the facility\u2019s non-Hispanic workers. The complaint also accused the company of not hiring women, black and Asian workers at the Brooklyn facility, which has since been moved to New Jersey.<\/p>\n

The family-owned business \u201ccategorically denied\u201d the 2016 allegations but paid $3.22 million to settle the case and \u201cavoid the distraction of litigation,\u201d it said at the time.<\/p>\n

Legal experts like Carolyn Richmond say they have been warning employers since April to take precautions not to discriminate when rehiring furloughed workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question becomes why is the employer not bringing an employee back who was let go simply because of COVID restrictions and not job performance,\u201d said Richmond, chair of the hospitality practice group at Fox Rothschild LLP. \u201cIt is certainly suspect to replace these workers with new hires.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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“#B&H accused of discrimination by furloughed workers” Some furloughed employees at B&H Photo Video fear that they recently lost their jobs for good \u2014 and claim it\u2019s because they reported unsafe working conditions during the coronavirus outbreak. After complaining about the company\u2019s handling of the pandemic back in March \u2014 including packed indoor prayer services…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":92262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/10\/19.1f.BH_.WEB_-e1603065788493.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[76229,70344,71693,4960,5015],"class_list":["post-92261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-10-18-20","tag-coronavirus-in-ny","tag-discrimination","tag-layoffs","tag-retailers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}