Workers Vanished As Coronavirus Swept Through L.A. Apparel. Colleagues Struggled For Answers

As the months passed, people began disappearing. Chairs once occupied by garment workers inside the Los Angeles Apparel factory sat empty. Rumors circulated about how the missing workers had gotten sick, or even died, of COVID-19. 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. Read more at Los Angeles Times.