18 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • NOVEMBER 2020
HOW ESSENTIAL INDUSTRIES HAVE ADAPTED TO THE PANDEMIC
A handful of leaders of businesses
that were declared essential recently
got together via Zoom to trade
notes and experiences at a virtual
gathering sponsored by the Hauppauge
Industrial Association of Long
Island (HIA-LI) and moderated by
Joseph Campolo, managing partner
at Campolo, Middleton & McCormick
in Ronkonkoma.
Campolo said manufacturers and
their workers were often unheralded
heroes of the pandemic.
“We were the Omaha Beach in Normandy
of COVID,” Campolo said of
New York. “We got hit like nobody’s
business. Healthcare workers stepped
up. Manufacturers do not get recognition
the way some others do.”
Having to keep going put a lot of pressure
on everyone from executives to
workers amid the onset of COVID-19.
“This was probably the most stress
I’ve ever had in my career,” Reingold
said. “The stress level was through
the roof.”
Some companies and projects were
not deemed essential initially only
to be reclassified as rules changed
suddenly.
“We did get shut down,” Jim Coughlan,
principal of East Setauket-based
Tritec Real Estate said. “Then PPP
came along and we didn’t have to lay
anybody off. There were a couple of
weeks at the beginning when there
was a huge fear of that.”
Tritec staggered shifts and outfitted
construction workers with devices
on helmets, triggering alarms if they
came within 6 feet of one another.
“If somebody did get sick, we could
tell who they were next to and where
they had been,” Coughlan said, noting
that Tritec’s workers had no cases in
New York, although there were some
in Virginia.
Shybunko-Moore said her company’s
work stations already were 6 feet
apart from each other, although some
employees shifted to work remotely.
Contract Pharmacal brought in temps
to do temperature monitoring of
workers arriving at work and after
lunch. When one temp charged with
taking temperatures didn’t arrive,
Reingold improvised.
“I gowned up, got a thermometer,”
said Reingold, who worked out of a
conference room for six weeks. “I
was taking temperatures for people
to come in.”
Contract Pharmacal hired outside
cleaning staff, brought in paper bag
lunches with the food truck on hold,
restructured lunch breaks, and set up
tents outside the building.
Hauppauge-based Walkers Shortbread
Inc. shifted to Microsoft Teams’
collaborative platform and limited
face-to-face meetings and virtual
meetings rather than telephone calls.
“It pushed us to have more virtual
meetings with customers,” Walkers
U.S. CEO Mark Kleinman said. “In
the past, it was phone calls. Now it’s
more commonplace to have virtual
meetings with video. I think that will
stick around.”
As more workers returned, companies
had to monitor more people onsite,
Reingold said. He added that he
got to spend more time with family,
with children home rather than busy
with activities such as sports and
dance.
“We expect there will be a second
wave,” Coughlan added. “But we’re
doing everything we can to prepare
and be as safe as possible.”
PRESS BUSINESS
continued from page 17
“There was no playbook,” says Jeffrey Reingold.
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