Mariana, a 56-year-old woman from El Salvador, felt afraid every day. She said workers like herself received little or delayed information from the South L.A. company about positive cases, leaving them to try and deduce why their colleagues had left.
The company’s founder said that as the coronavirus swept through the factory, management informed employees who may have been exposed in a timely fashion. But garment workers who spoke to The Times tell a different story, saying they were largely kept in the dark as colleagues became sick, and the information they did receive was slow to arrive or vague.
On July 10, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health ordered the factory to shut down operations. DPH released a lengthy statement detailing the myriad of ways Los Angeles Apparel skirted basic safety precautions: Limited social distancing standards, cardboard barriers between workers instead of more effective plexiglass, and hiring new employees despite explicit orders not to. Additionally, Los Angeles Apparel allegedly attempted to prevent DPH employees from entering the factory in the days before the shutdown.
“Business owners and operators have a corporate, moral and social responsibility to their employees and their families to provide a safe work environment that adheres to all of the health officer directives,” said DPH Director Barbara Ferrer in the statement.
According to the New York Times, Charney called the release “media theatrics.” He also released a statement of his own, which can only be described as audacious bullshit:
In all fairness, it’s morally irresponsible for the Health Department to speak on the infection rates at our factory without also addressing its connection to the issue at large: that the Latino community in Los Angeles is left vulnerable to Covid-19 in a healthcare system that provides no support with testing and no support or assistance for those that test positive.
Sure, a predatory healthcare structure, the nation’s broken immigration system, and the general aloofness of elected officials are responsible for the crisis that’s left the Latinx community vulnerable to covid-19. But Charney’s lax health factory safety standards are complicit in that story, despite the transparent lip service to social justice.
The Los Angeles Apparel factory re-opened in late July.
PPP money went to plenty of other pricks who don’t design turtlenecks that make my rack look amazing: According the Vice, Flywheel received a cool $1.71 million, makeup crypt kepr Jeffree Starr received a little over $413,000, and the now defunct Man Repeller scored around $314 million just before shuttering forever. But there’s something particularly odious about over $2 million and a military contract going to a man who couldn’t even protect the workers he has built his entire career ostensibly centering.
