Los Angeles Apparel owner Dov Charney denies there's an 'outbreak' of COVID-19 among his workers, despite 375 employees infected and 4 dead

• In an interview with Business Insider, Los Angeles Apparel CEO Dov Charney flatly denied that there's an outbreak of COVID-19 at his company, claiming instead that he's a victim of politics.
• "I'm alleging that certain people at the department are misleading the public because they're looking for a political win," Charney said.
• The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health confirmed last week that at least 375 employees have now been infected, representing more than 16.3% of the company's workforce. Four workers have died.
• "Any suggestion that this is an acceptable level of infection rate in a workplace is plain wrong," a department spokesperson told Business Insider.
• A former employee alleged that the company did not enforce social distancing, a claim supported by the health department.
• "I've never been so disgusted by a business person," the former employee said in an interview.
• Charney, who was forced out of American Apparel amid allegations of financial mismanagement, said the allegations were "preposterous."

Los Angeles Apparel sells itself as different: terms like "living wage" and "sustainability" are sandwiched between early-20s models in skin-tight hipster fashions. It shifted production during the pandemic to make face masks, allowing it to reopen as an "essential" business.

But on July 10, the Los Angeles County Department of Health announced that it was shutting down production at the company's factory after "flagrant violations" of measures intended to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Four workers are now dead — three died in June and one in July — and more than 300 others have been infected with the coronavirus.

Dov Charney, the Canadian fashion executive ousted from American Apparel following allegations of sexual harassment and financial mismanagement, doesn't just deny any wrongdoing, he denies there is a problem at all.

"There was no outbreak here," he told Business Insider, asserting that a 15% infection rate among his staff was commensurate with the rate in South Los Angeles as a whole.

"The local hospital here, of the 7,000 cases they tested for, between the period of April 15th and June 30th, they had 1,050 cases, which is 15%," Charney added, identifying the facility as Kedren Community Health Center.

At the time Charney was speaking, there were not just 300 cases of COVID-19 at Los Angeles Apparel. As of July 14, there were 375 positive test results among some 2,290 employees, the Department of Public Health told Business Insider. That comes out to 16.3%, compared to a county-wide 7-day average, as of that date, of under 10%.

"Any suggestion that this is an acceptable level of infection rate in a workplace is plain wrong," a department spokesperson said. "Business owners and operators have a corporate, moral, and social responsibility to their employees and their employee's families to provide a safe working environment."

Kedren Community Health Center said it had no data showing, as Charney claimed, that the rate in South LA is any higher — much less as high as it is among staff at his company. "We don't have that information," Kristina Ledesma-Davies, chief administrative officer, told Business Insider, noting that the hospital's walk-in testing clinic receives visitors, disproportionately symptomatic, from all over Los Angeles.

Latinos, who make up a large part of the city's garment industry, are twice as likely as whites to catch the coronavirus in Los Angeles County. Daisy Gonzalez, an organizer with the Garment Worker Center, a labor advocacy group in Los Angeles, was blunt: "One of the main reasons that Latinos are disproportionately getting sick and dying from COVID 19, is that members of our community are more likely to work in places like Los Angeles Apparel."

Expanding during a public health crisis

As the pandemic worsened, Charney brought more and more employees back to Los Angeles Apparel. The complaints began in May, Gonzalez said, and centered on a "lack of protections and mismanagement." One employee, she said, "told us that the factory quickly went from about 400 workers to over 1,000 without the protocols in place to properly deal with prevention."

At least one former employee, Maribel Maldonado, insists she did not get COVID-19 from the community she lives in but from her former place of work. Speaking to The Guardian, Maldonado said there was no consistent enforcement of social-distancing within the Los Angeles Apparel facility where she worked.

"There were too many people to separate everyone," she told the paper. "We didn't fit."

In the haste to expand, Charney conceded that mistakes were made. For example, he admitted that he did not obtain a public health permit for one of the factories that he opened during the pandemic, characterizing it as "an administrative error at worst." Such a permit, according to the Department of Public Health, would have opened the building up to inspection "for compliance with general sanitation," among other requirements.

Speaking to Business Insider, Charney portrayed himself as a victim of politics. "I'm not alleging conspiracy," he said. "I'm alleging that certain people at the department are misleading the public because they're looking for a political win."

Specifically, he denied what a health department spokesperson had earlier told Business Insider, and which some former employees have claimed: that physical distancing was not consistently enforced; that some workstations were not six feet apart; and that the company was "not disinfecting the plant."

"That's garbage," he said, arguing that if public health were a concern then city officials should have done more to quash Black Live Matter protests. "Why didn't the mayor's office and the police and everybody say, 'We're not going to allow demonstrations'?" (A recent study found "no evidence that urban protests reignited COVID-19 case growth.")

Charney also maintained that he was unaware that a lack of social distancing was even an alleged issue at his company, stating that he first heard about it was "On the phone with you right now. Or maybe yesterday. I heard it in passing."

At the same time, he acknowledged that it was not always a reality, arguing that enforcement failings "could happen in any place" and attributing some of the blame to employees.

"Workers also have to make an effort to remain socially distant," he said. "We live in a free society. If you walk outside, you go to the bathroom, whatever, it's not like Big Brother can be there all the time."

Charney has workers who agree with him. Even his harshest critics concede that he enjoys some fierce loyalty among his workforce. At $14.25 an hour, those who are employed sewing clothes at Los Angeles Apparel enjoy a wage far better than some of their peers in a sector that's notorious for sub-legal wages.

Social distancing and societal blame

But that, one former worker told Business Insider, can also lead to some looking the other way at other issues in the workplace.

Requesting anonymity for fear of retaliation within the industry, the former employee told Business Insider that decent wages, for the industry, were the upside to an otherwise poor experience — a lack of social distancing was just one of several problems at Los Angeles Apparel. They said the pandemic was seen as a major business opportunity, and the company's expansion was coupled with a lackadaisical approach to safety.

"You're sitting about three feet or less from the person across you at their sewing desk and you are constantly handing off fabrics from one person to the next," the former employee said. "These people who are handing off little projects or things they're sewing, from one person to the next, don't have a full understanding or concept of keeping their hands clean, of washing their hands, of keeping a distance — because there is no distance. There's no way to have social distance because of the way things were set up."

A spokesperson for the health department told Business Insider that employees were not given information "on COVID transmission," nor were staff "trained on COVID and infection control practice in the workplace."

Charney described such training as "all the stuff we've already been taught as a society," questioning the need to educate staff on "everything that you know already." But, in a quest to reopen, he held the first such formal training, led by an outside educator, on July 13.

That approach, the ex-employee said — treating the pandemic as something other than an employer's responsibility — permeated the company's response to the public health crisis.

"That was his attitude through this whole thing.... 'Oh, it'll be fine. We'll just wash our hands. I think you're worrying about it too much,'" the employee said. "I've never been so disgusted by a business person."

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