WORKERS: B&H PHOTOBOMBS US

Fear job loss over ‘bias, retaliation’

Some furloughed employees at B&H Photo Video fear that they recently lost their jobs for good — and claim it’s because they reported unsafe working conditions during the coronavirus outbreak.

After complaining about the company’s handling of the pandemic back in March — including packed indoor prayer services for its ultra-Orthodox Jewish workers — some staffers have spotted what look like postings for their jobs online. It’s a position they wouldn’t be in, they suspect, if they were part of the company’s inner circle of Hasidic employees, who they say get special treatment.

“They definitely used COVID as a cover to eliminate some of us,” said Dan Wagner, a nearly six-year veteran of the famed New York tech retailer,er, which is known for its conveyor-beltelt system of moving merchandisese around its three-story megastore on West 34th Street and Ninth Avenue..

Wagner, a professional photogra-apher who worked as a product descrip-ption writer for B&H, says he believeses he has not been asked back to workrk after he raised a fuss in March aboutut the daily prayer services, which tookk place in the company’s lunchrooms.

“I told HR that people shouldn’tt congregate,” Wagner said, adding that B&H later announced in a newsletter that two workers who had attended the prayers had died from the virus in late March.

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

William Cannon, also a B&H content writer, says he believes he isn’t being brought back because he asked for permission to work from home in March. “I told [HR] that I don’t feel safe at the office, leaving in the packed elevators and working so close to others,” Cannon said.

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. “There were 60 people packed in there and I’d have to step over them to get to the refrigerator,” he said. “It was uncomfortable for me.”

B&H told Cannon to use his paid time off until it came up with a workfrom-home plan, which it did about a week later. “B&H was very slow to take the pandemic seriously,” he said. “I took all my PTO days because they didn’t have a plan.”

Cannon and Wagner say they were furloughed along with some 400 other workers — about 20 percent of B&H’s staff — on April 27. The company notified workers via e-mail that they would be paid for 2¹/2 days and receive health benefits through May 31.

Cannon has been unable to pay for his insulin since June and was forced to share the drug with his diabetic uncle, with whom he lives.

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 has.

“I took this as their way of getting rid of the people they didn’t want,” he said of the job posting. “It was so sudden with no followups. It seemed like a way to lay people off without telling them they were laid off.”

Wagner, meanwhile, saw two listings for his job as photography writer on the company’s Web site, most recently on Thursday.

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 July 1.

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’s 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.

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 has provided e-mails between him and the EEOC showing that he filed one.

B&H, which Blimie and Herman Schreiber opened in 1973, declined to comment on the job listings or Wagner’s discrimination complaint, except to say that it “welcomes the EEOC’s findings.”

“B&H was one of the last retailers to furlough employees,” the company’s chief marketing officer, Jeff Gerstel, told The Post in a statement.

“We’re proudly bringing back to work furloughed employees every week while we navigate these challenging times. We cannot respond to individual employee matters.”

Wagner claims B&H’s Hasidic staff gets special perks, including what he believes are company-sponsored shuttle buses to help them commute to and from work.

The shuttles, which cost employees $2.75 a ride, are not offered to nonHasidic employees, he said.

B&H declined to comment on its role in providing the buses, but a person close to the company noted that in August, the retailer was named New York’s 14th-best employer for 2020 by Forbes.