Last month we reported that B&H employees were seeking unionization amid rampant allegations of safety hazards and racial discrimination. Yesterday the vote to unionize was completed, and the workers from two B&H warehouses in Bushwick and in the Brooklyn Navy Yard voted by a 200-to-88 margin for representation by the United Steelworkers (USW) union.

In early October, USW union representatives delivered a letter addressed to the company’s owner, Herman Schreiber, and its chief executive officer and president, Sam Goldstein, asking to be acknowledged as the “sole and exclusive bargaining representative of the employees.”

 

Another letter was delivered to the company asking that it act on complaints that employees had been subject to discrimination because they are Hispanic and had been pressured by managers to sign English-language forms releasing the company from medical claims. In addition, the letter said that employees had been forced to work long hours in warehouses where emergency exits were blocked and noxious dust appeared to cause rashes and nosebleeds.

These are never fun conversations to discuss, but they are necessary. The proper treatment of workers for the largest independent photo/video vendor in the United States seems like something that would go without saying.

[Via United Steelworkers Union]