Suit over Jewish ‘bonus’ babies
The Hasidic owners of the famed photo-equipment retailer B&H are so keen on having their Jewish workers propagate that they’ve kicked in a little extra incentive: a $2,000 “baby bonus,” a new lawsuit says.
But the lucrative familyfriendly perk is discriminatory — because the company’s Mexican workers get zilch for procreating, according to the Manhattan Supreme Court suit.
“When each of its Jewish employees had a baby, B&H awarded the employee a $2,000 bonus plus two paid days off but did not grant its non-Jewish/ Mexican employees a similar award when they had children,” according to court papers.
The Manhattan-based firm is owned by Herman Schreiber, who belongs to the Satmar Hasidic community and employs many ultra-Orthodox staffers. Procreation is a major tenet of their faith, and the city’s Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods have among the highest birthrates.
A spokesman for B&H acknowledged that the company gives out “baby bonuses’’ but insisted that the amount is $180 per kid — and that everyone gets them.
“B&H employees get $180 when they have a baby, adopt a baby, get married or one of their children gets married,” spokesman Michael McKeon told The Post on Wednesday.
“It’s a gesture that is given to all employees on these special occasions,” McKeon said.
But plaintiffs Raul Pedraza, Oscar Martinez and Antonio Hernandez dispute the claims in their suit — and add that their B&H bosses have discriminated against them in other ways.
The men said they were encouraged to recruit illegal immigrants to work at the company, with their bosses joking that they were in the business of “selling tamales and Social Security numbers.”
The trio’s national-origin and religious-discrimination suit adds that they were called “stupid Mexicans” and told “their religion is fake.”
“B&H hired Mexican immigrants for the purpose of exploiting them,” the suit says, asserting that none of the foreign workers were offered supervisory roles.
In fact, one was told by a higher-up that the company “considered non-Jews to be unqualified for management-level positions,” the papers state.
In addition, “B&H consistently assigned the most rigorous heavy labor to non-Jewish Mexican employees while allowing the Jewish, non-Mexican laborers to perform easier tasks, or do nothing at all,” the suit says.
Pedraza worked at B&H’s Brooklyn facility unloading mer- chandise from September 2010 until his position was eliminated in August 2017. Martinez and Hernandez are still employed as laborers for B&H.
The men are suing for the $200,000 settlement they were promised in August that hasn’t materialized, say court papers.
McKeon, the B&H spokesman, called the additional claims “outright lies,” too.
He added that since the men first made their discrimination allegations “years ago,” warehouse workers have unionized and B&H was named one of America’s best mid-size employers this year.
The parties said they reached a settlement last Wednesday but declined to provide a copy because it’s “confidential.” Nothing had been filed in court as of press time.