To preface this, we are located in the U.S. (Miami to be exact).
About a year ago my coworkers and I started noticing black specks on our desks. We thought it was odd and were even more concerned when we found a large black chunk (about the size of a quarter) on one of our filing cabinets, directly below an air vent.
We brought this up to one of the company owners with a photo attached as proof, but he never responded to our message. We then decided to take it to our Director and she informed us that she would call an A/C company – which took a whole month to be clear – and she informed us it was an issue with the rubber cord for the unit falling apart. We were told it was replaced and everything was fine now but that there were no filters in the vents, and probably hadn’t been for years by that point. Our director said she would take care of it but never did. After noticing they hadn’t been installed, I brought this up with the building’s landlord and our director and even offered to install them myself. I told them everyone was sneezing, coughing, having headaches, and getting sick frequently. But they said no and that they would do it but they never did.
Now a year later, we began to notice a build up of mold inside our desks, in folders, on printers. So we took it upon ourselves to buy dehumidifiers and lysol to remove the mold, but it’s kept spreading. After weeks of this, we were so fed up that we sent a company-wide email to the owners with pictures and filed a complaint with OSHA (who never called us) which finally set some things into motion. The owners brought an A/C repairman in and learned there were “much more severe issues than expected with the A/C that caused neglect” and that we would need to come in this week to remove all of our belongings and clean the place out before they did a “deep clean”. We would also need to work from home for a few days.
Should we get a lawyer involved? Many of us have been sick this year and have had to go to the doctors/lost days of PTO and we’re concerned this was the cause.