In mid-March, while the coronavirus it caused deaths in New York, Washington state, California and New Jersey and the crisis grew due to the shortage of personal protective equipment, Dov Charney, de Los Angeles Apparel, was one of the first clothing retailers to step into the void.
By reopening their Los Angeles factory to produce mouthguards, Charney, the former executive director of American Apparel who was dismissed amid allegations of embezzlement and who, despite his knowledge, allowed situations of sexual harassmentHe went from being a rejected person to being seen as a hero.
Los Angeles Apparel, his new company, was considered an essential business. The federal government became one of its clients, Charney said. The long road to redemption suddenly seemed much shorter.
However, on Friday, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (DPH) ordered the closure of the Charney manufacturing facility: An investigation revealed more than 300 confirmed infections among its workers and four deaths. . Three deaths were recorded in June and one in July.
In a statement detailing the reasons for the closure, the department cited “Flagrant violations of mandatory public health infection control orders” and fail in “Cooperate with DPH investigation of a reported COVID-19 outbreak”.
This is one of the first closings of a factory in Los Angeles due to outbreaks related to the coronavirus, according to Jan King, regional health officer for South and West Los Angeles. Despite the fact that the health department conducts numerous investigations, they are usually resolved through actions with the companies involved.
“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 guidelines of health officials; Now more than ever this responsibility is important as we continue to combat this deadly virus, ”said Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, in a statement on the closure, which contained a timeline of the investigation.
Media theater
In a phone call, Charney called the ad a “Media theater” and said: “I do not believe that this statement represents the point of view of the people with whom I am working in the Department of Health. Some of them have apologized to me. It is not true. ”
Los Angeles Apparel began operating in 2016 and, according to Charney, employs nearly 2,000 workers in three properties. The businessman claims that since the coronavirus started, they have produced more than 10 million face masks, of which about 80 percent have been sold to government agencies.
Charney said that all employees had been wearing face masks and that the machines were 5.91 feet (1.80 meters) apart. He said the equipment and space were regularly sanitized and that the company had frequently tested employees in the past five weeks.
On June 19, a nurse contacted the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health about a potential outbreak at Los Angeles Apparel, according to officials.
The Health Department launched an investigation, which included a request for the company to send a list of all employees, a request the institution said was not honored even after multiple requests. On June 26, officials made a site visit, and the next day, the factory was closed.
According to King, the violations discovered included cardboard barriers between workers’ stations and material with recommendations about the coronavirus that had not been translated into Spanish (the native language of most employees). An official also detected the lack of training in health protocols because when a doctor asked the employee in charge of checking that his colleagues did not present symptoms, the person could not mention what they were, even though they were on the wall behind him.
Although some of the infractions were minor, King said, there was a feeling that the company was not taking seriously the documents that the health department had sent that listed the changes that needed to be implemented. As a result, the research team went from being represented by one person to increasing to about ten.
The factory reopened briefly on July 9 before being forced to close again.
Charney questioned all of these facts. He said it was his company that first alerted the health department to that situation; that the company did its best to provide the requested list of employees, but that there were privacy issues involved; that cardboard was in addition to social distancing regulations (and that it had been recommended by a consultant because the virus does not survive long in cardboard).
He also said it was the responsibility of the Health Department – and not the company – to translate their documents into Spanish.
The legal department of the Health Department, Charney said, had indicated that the factory could reopen on July 9, although King mentioned that, first, a document was necessary to allow the reopening. Charney attributed the confusion to “communication failure” in an overworked department.
“Three hundred is a very alarming outbreak”King said of the individuals who have become ill at those facilities.
The factory remains closed, according to a statement from the health department, until “they can demonstrate that the facility fully complies with what is required by Public Health,” but both the health department and Charney hope to reopen in the last days of this week.
King states that both sides are “in constant contact.” Charney said he was “learning a lot.”
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