B&H: what goes on behind the scenes may surprise you.

carguy

Senior Member
Hiring illegals is not a very good thing to begin with.
The rest are accusations at this point.
...and the source of the story? ;)
 

nala

Senior Member
Haven't got much time for this mob at the moment. Won't take orders for Nikon DSLR's to Australia. Threatened by Nikon. Same at Adorama.
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Haven't got much time for this mob at the moment. Won't take orders for Nikon DSLR's to Australia. Threatened by Nikon. Same at Adorama.

That's something entirely different. Nikon bodies are sold and distributed by local companies. You can't buy a DSLR from America any more than we can buy one from Japan.
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Don't work there, that's an option; I doubt they are chained or locked in the place, leave. Not saying they are right or wrong (need facts from both sides, media is worthless, but that's a whole different topic).

Easy to say when you're not looking for work. No, they're not chained. But it's possible to make you feel like you might as well be.

I'd love to say more, but am currently not at liberty. Nothing said in the article surprises me in any way whatsoever. This is an old, "family" run retail that's grown leaps and bounds in the internet age still being run by the same "family" as if it were the old retail store. Same deal with the other big camera retailers from the area. You're talking businesses that will walk out of the Photoplus Show in NYC on Friday afternoon and be absent all day on Saturdays because of religious observances. No paid time off other than religious holidays (those 17 paid days are predetermined - paid vacation is not an immediate benefit) when even their websites take a break from operating normally. It's tough to change an embedded culture when you're not part of it.
 
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Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
I don't claim to know what's going on at B&H, be it good or bad, but when I read, "Al Jazeera America reported..."?

Yeah... That's where I stopped reading.

The Truth: It has this odd way of coming out eventually.
.....
 

AC016

Senior Member
Whether anyone thinks the article is a smear campaign by a supposed "antisemitic" news outlet is their choice. However, long before this particular article came out, there were plenty of other news articles about the same subject matter. Both the NY Times and the NY Daily News (among other news outlets) have written similar stories on past employee complaints and court cases. Antisemitic or simply doing their jobs by reporting a story?
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...2-hispanic-employees-lawsuit-article-1.991286
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/14/n...to-video-citing-hazards-move-to-unionize.html
B&H Photo Pays $4.3M To Settle Discrimination Suit - Law360
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/nyregion/19bagels.html
http://whistleblower.nyc/major-cases/sexual-discrimination-at-bh-photo/

To state that Al Jezeera is writing up the article to simply be Antisemetic, is losing sight of the fact that these issues with B&H go back for quite a few years.
 

Wolfeye

Senior Member
I don't claim to know what's going on at B&H, be it good or bad, but when I read, "Al Jazeera America reported..."?

Yeah... That's where I stopped reading.

The Truth: It has this odd way of coming out eventually.
.....

Just goes to show what happens when you have geeks and photographers blindly reposting "news" articles. They never checked the source. Not that a site like Petapixel cares about anything but cell phones and Apple computers anyhow...
 

AC016

Senior Member
Just goes to show what happens when you have geeks and photographers blindly reposting "news" articles. They never checked the source. Not that a site like Petapixel cares about anything but cell phones and Apple computers anyhow...

The source is irrelevant when it comes to the subject matter of the story, which has already been reported by the NY Times and the NY Daily News in the past. And by the way, i already knew the source of the story, but also did a Google search for corroborating stories, which there are a plenty. ;)
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Whether anyone thinks the article is a smear campaign by a supposed "antisemitic" news outlet is their choice. However, long before this particular article came out, there were plenty of other news articles about the same subject matter. Both the NY Times and the NY Daily News (among other news outlets) have written similar stories on past employee complaints and court cases. Antisemitic or simply doing their jobs by reporting a story?
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...2-hispanic-employees-lawsuit-article-1.991286
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/14/n...to-video-citing-hazards-move-to-unionize.html
B&H Photo Pays $4.3M To Settle Discrimination Suit - Law360
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/nyregion/19bagels.html
Law Offices of Richard B. Ancowitz | Sexual Discrimination at B&H Photo

To state that Al Jezeera is writing up the article to simply be Antisemetic, is losing sight of the fact that these issues with B&H go back for quite a few years.

This.

Not to mention that some of the most even handed coverage of many world events that I've read recently comes from Al Jezeera, second probably only to what I get from BBC World News.

Consider the source all you want, nowhere in the Al Jezeera report do they mention anything about the owners being Jewish (that all starts in the comments). You want to imply your own prejudices, go right ahead.

The fact is the first time I walked into B&H was with my brother over 30 years ago, and then we went to Adorama and 47th Street Photo. They were all cramped little shops run by guys in yarmulkes and if you got there on Friday you better be done your business by 3:30. It's a close and closed community that doesn't tolerate any outsiders very well - and I know and love a lot of them. Knowing what I know about them nothing in any of these reports surprises me, and I'm about as far as you can get from an anti-semite. As they say, business is business, and they've run it this way for decades. Only now the internet has made their mail order explode where before it was just geeks ordering from the back of photography mags.
 
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