Labor violations on par with sweatshops in Bangladesh, factory workers say. But building managers blocked a reporter from looking inside.



For the past decade, in a windowless, 160,000-square-foot warehouse tucked along the eastern edge of the Brooklyn Navy Yard — under the nose of Brooklyn politicians, developers and high-profile neighbors — more than 200 laborers claim they’ve been toiling in hellish conditions that have crippled them physically, broken them down mentally and, more than once, endangered their lives.

The facility is the main manufacturing plant for B&H Photo, the consumer electronics giant whose Manhattan megastore and online catalog are beloved by photo and film enthusiasts all over the world.

Its little-known factory is known only as Building 664.

And if the chilling stories B&H Photo factory workers now tell about life inside Building 664 turn out to be true, the factory should, under New York state labor law, easily qualify as a sweatshop, according to Stephanie Luce, a professor of labor studies for the City University of New York (CUNY).
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