B&H Photo Still Keeping Secrets in Brooklyn Warehouse

UPDATE, 3 p.m.: We just noticed that B&H Photo’s communications director uploaded 10 photos, which he says he took inside Building 664 in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, to his personal Facebook page. Scroll to the bottom for more.

If workplace regulations within the mysterious Building 664, B&H Photo’s warehouse in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, are as sound as the company claims, why won’t management let anyone inside?

More than 200 laborers who’ve worked inside the factory over the past decade — most of them Hispanic, and many of them undocumented — claim it’s hot, stuffy and swirling with dust and fiberglass that fills their eyes and nose and mouth and embeds in their skin. They claim they lift backbreaking loads and operate forklifts with no training and no safety gear. They claim they’re sometimes asked to work up to 16 hours a day, with a single midday break.

Patch cannot confirm those claims, aside from observing the wounds that mark the laborers’ bodies.

Standing in the cruddy parking lot outside their workplace, as this reporter did a couple weeks back, it’s hard to tell what goes on inside: Building 664 is a windowless, 160,000-square-foot metal pen that could, for all we know, be housing anything from a cattle farm to a knitting collective to an alien colony to, well, a sweatshop with conditions on par with Bangladesh’s worst.

Henry Posner, director of corporate communications for B&H Photo, had said he couldn’t speak to warehouse conditions, as he’d never had a chance to visit the warehouse.

“I’m in Manhattan, and the warehouse is in Brooklyn,” he said. “I have to confess I’ve never been over there.”

However, Posner said he saw no reason why a Patch reporter couldn’t go have a look. (Although he’s now denying he said anything of the sort.)

Managers on site would not allow a Patch reporter inside the building.

An Orthodox Jewish man who identified himself to Patch as the manager, and who gave his name as Gedaria Apel, said no one was allowed to enter the building without permission from the human resources department.

But the human resources department deferred back to Posner to grant a reporter permission to enter.

Reached by phone again last Tuesday, Posner said the only way a reporter could enter the factory is if he or she was escorted by a manager. “I already brought your request to management once, and it was denied,” he said. “But I’ll be happy to go back and ask again.”

Posner has not reached back out to us in the week since, nor has he returned our emails or calls.

(UPDATE: Posner picked up the phone late Tuesday afternoon. “Nobody has said anything to me” about Patch‘s entry request, he said. He would not elaborate.)

In a statement prepared by an external PR company, B&H Photo claims it “has a strong and independent human resources department which strictly adheres to workplace regulations. We take matters of employee satisfaction seriously and are committed to reaching even higher standards to ensure that we live up to our own expectations commensurate with the excellent reputation we have fostered over many years.”

But the only non-affiliates who’ve been able to have a look inside the factory to confirm or deny, as far as we can tell, are federal investigators from the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA). They’ve been inspecting B&H Photo’s facilities for the past three months, based on recent complaints.

Until their investigations conclude, there appears to be no way for concerned neighbors to hold B&H Photo accountable for its warehouse conditions, whatever those may be — a result of the company’s secretive no-press policy.

NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio’s office still has not replied to a request for comment on the alleged goings-on inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s Building 664.

UPDATE: Posner says he traveled to Building 664 with an escort a few days ago and snapped 10 cellphone pics on the first and second floors of the warehouse. “I had the opportunity to go to the warehouse with somebody else who was going there, and I was allowed to take photos with my cellphone camera,” he said.

Click here for the full gallery.

Things we can tell from the photos: 1) The storage rooms photographed by Posner are relatively bare, aside from a bunch of stacked boxes and pallets. They have no windows. 2) There is a room with a soda machine, a coffee machine and a sink, which Posner calls a “refreshment area.” 3) There is at least one door marked “emergency exit,” which Posner apparently hopes will disprove workers’ claims that they had no way to evacuate during a 2014 fire. 4) Only like two people work here?

Things we can’t tell from the photos: 1) What the rest of the 160,000-square-foot space looks like. 2) What the air quality is like. 3) What kind of machinery workers are using. 4) What kind of safety training, if any, workers are receiving. 5) What kind of safety gear, if any, workers are wearing. 6) What kind of break schedule workers are given. 7) What kind of shifts workers are pulling. 8) How managers are treating workers. 9) What kind of medical facilities are available. 10) Etcetera.

B&H Photo management is still refusing to let a Patch reporter into the warehouse.