Category: Look Out for the Little Guy

Lawsuit Alleges Trump Wanted to Replace Unattractive Female Employees

Donald Trump wanted to fire female employees he considered unattractive and replace them with better-looking women at a golf resort he owned, according to court documents from a 2012 lawsuit.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the court documents detail a lawsuit that alleges Trump pressured employees at the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos to replace those he viewed to be unattractive female employees over a number of years in the 2000s.

The report comes as Trump has faced renewed criticism that he disrespects women, a narrative fueled by his controversial remarks about a former Miss Universe that he worked with when he owned the beauty pageant. Hillary Clinton raised in Monday’s debate the fact that he called Alicia Machado “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping” after she won his 1996 Miss Universe pageant.

Hayley Strozier, an employee at the golf club until 2008, alleged in a sworn declaration she “had witnessed Donald Trump tell managers many times while he was visiting the club that restaurant hostesses were ‘not pretty enough’ and that they should be fired and replaced with more attractive women.”

According to the LA Times report, the employees said in their lawsuit that they rotated employees schedules “so that the most attractive women were scheduled to work when Mr. Trump was scheduled to be at the club.”

The Trump Organization called the allegations “meritless.”

“We do not engage in discrimination of any kind,” said Jill Martin, vice president and assistant general counsel for The Trump Organization. “The statements made by a group of former disgruntled employees are far from an accurate portrayal of what it is like to work at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles. Mr. Trump’s sole focus is on ensuring that the facility and operation are providing the highest level of service and an unparalleled golf experience. The only appearance Mr. Trump cares about is that of the facility and the grounds. Rather than looking to old statements from a handful of employees with an ax to grind, the media should focus on the thousands of happy employees, of all races, gender, size and shape, whose lives upon which Mr. Trump has made an incredibly positive impact.”

In the lawsuit, employees claim that Trump’s stated preferences regarding female employees caused managers to value appearance over skill when making hiring and staffing decisions. They also allege that Trump himself made inappropriate and unprofessional comments toward female employees.

The LA Times described the case as a “broad labor relations lawsuit” that is “focused on the course’s high-pressure work culture” in addition to spotlighting the revelations about Trump’s treatment of female employees.

According to the Times’ report, “the bulk of the lawsuit was settled in 2013” with a $475,000 payment to plaintiff employees without any admission of wrongdoing. Another female employee who said she was fired for complaining about the treatment of women at the golf club agreed to a separate settlement with confidential terms.

(h/t CNN)

Trump Wants to Roll Back Food Safety Regulations

Donald Trump floated rolling back food safety regulations if he wins the White House in November.

In a fact sheet posted online Thursday, the campaign highlighted a number of “specific regulations to be eliminated” under the GOP nominee’s economic plan, including what they called the “FDA Food Police.”

“The FDA Food Police, which dictate how the federal government expects farmers to produce fruits and vegetables and even dictates the nutritional content of dog food,” it read.“The rules govern the soil farmers use, farm and food production hygiene, food packaging, food temperatures and even what animals may roam which fields and when,” the statement continued. “It also greatly increased inspections of food ‘facilities,’ and levies new taxes to pay for this inspection overkill.”

The fact sheet was later removed from the website and a new fact sheet detailing Trump’s economic agenda did not include mention of the FDA.

The FDA recently completed an overhaul of the food safety system with seven rules to better protect consumers from food-borne illnesses. Manufacturers of both animal and human food are now required to implement preventive controls to minimize the risk of contaminating food when it’s manufactured, processed, packed or held by a facility.

Trump’s economic policy plan also calls for “an immediate halt to new federal regulations and a very thorough agency-level review of previous regulations to see which need to be scrapped.”

Agencies would be required to list all regulations and rank them in terms of their contribution to growth, health and safety. The ultimate goal, Trump said, would be to strengthen the rules that are useful and reduce the rules that harm the economy.

(h/t The Hill)

Reality

Republicans can complain about regulations all they want, FDA food regulations on hygiene are part of the reason why when eating food you don’t think twice about if it will kill you.

Who cares what report they manipulate to show regulations kill jobs (overall they don’t) when we are talking about public safety.

Probably the most recent famous incident involving sub-standard sanitary conditions resulting in a public health crisis was the listeriosis outbreak caused by Blue Bell ice cream in 2015 that caused 5 deaths.

These protections are what Trump wants to repeal. This isn’t funny.

Ivanka Trump Lies About Trump Organization’s Paid Parental Leave

In an apparent contradiction to what Ivanka Trump said on “Good Morning America” yesterday, the Trump Organization has suggested that not all of its employees are eligible to receive eight weeks of paid maternity and adoption leave.

Deirdre Rosen, the senior vice president of human resources for the Trump Organization, told ABC News that the Trump Organization does offer a an eight-week paid parental leave policy, but said that may not be the case at the various properties that comprise GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s sprawling empire.

“The Trump Organization is proud of the family friendly environment it fosters throughout its portfolio. The Trump Organization, along with the lifestyle brand, Ivanka Trump, a company separate from the Trump Organization, wholly owned by Ivanka Trump, both offer an industry leading eight-week paid parental leave policy,” Rosen said in a statement. “The policies and practices allowing employees to enjoy a healthy work-life balance vary from property to property. We take an individualized approach to helping employees manage family and work responsibilities.”

During an interview Wednesday on “Good Morning America,” Ivanka Trump told ABC News anchor Amy Robach that all of Trump’s employees are offered paid maternity leave and adoption leave.

Robach asked if the benefit is applicable to all Trump Organization workers. Ivanka Trump responded: “It is and also adoption leave.”

The Trump Organization declined to release copies of its employee handbooks to ABC News, saying “the organization is a private business and will not be providing their handbooks which are considered proprietary.”

ABC News has asked the company to provide the sections in the employee handbook outlining the Trump Organization and Ivanka Trump’s family leave policies. The company has not yet responded to that request.

The Trump Organization also declined to elaborate on which employees are eligible for the eight-week paid parental leave.

The Trump campaign told ABC News this afternoon that the statement from Trump’s company “needs no further comment.”

Here is the full exchange between Robach and Ivanka Trump:

ROBACH: You’re an executive vice president at the Trump Organization. You said last night that the Trump Organization headed by your father does offer paid maternity leave for its employees. Is that for all of the thousands of employees of your father?

IVANKA TRUMP: It is and also adoption leave. So it’s a great thing and at my own business since inception I’ve offered eight weeks paid leave, only 10 percent of American companies offer that benefit, so it is quite unique and this policy is to encourage more companies and to encourage all Americans to be able to get the benefit of it should they be new mothers because it’s so critical and important.

(h/t ABC News)

Reality

If it does offer parental leave, that’s news to employees at many of the Trump Organization’s hotels.

The Huffington Post on Wednesday morning checked the validity of Ivanka Trump’s comments to ABC. Employees at the Trump SoHo, New York and Miami hotels, as well as the Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, all said that they do not offer workers paid maternity leave. Instead, they said that the company complied with the Family and Medical Leave Act, a federal law that requires companies to give employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid time off for the adoption or birth of a child.

An undated employee handbook for the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, obtained by HuffPost, states that workers there are entitled to unpaid family leave, in accordance with the FMLA. The manual notes that employees must “substitute their earned and unused vacation days and personal days for any otherwise unpaid FMLA leave.” That is, if employees want paid maternity or paternity leave, they have to use other paid time off that they’ve banked.

Media

Good Morning America via Yahoo News

Trump Policy Staffers Quit After Not Being Paid

Many of Donald Trump’s Washington, D.C., policy staffers quit working for the campaign after not being paid or publicly recognized, according to a new report in The Washington Post.

According to former employees, they were told they would be paid when Corey Lewandowski was campaign manager. But Paul Manafort, who replaced Lewandowski in July, said the staffers would remain unpaid.

“It’s a complete disaster,” a campaign adviser told the Post. “They use and abuse people. The policy office fell apart in August when the promised checks weren’t delivered.”

Jason Miller, a campaign spokesman, said that the D.C. policy shop has been “very successful” but added that “no such oral agreements were made” in respect to paying the staffers.

The two leaders of the policy shop, Rick Dearborn and John Mashburn, allegedly promised the workers that the money was coming. The report notes, however, that Dearborn failed to get an approved budget for the D.C. branch after Manafort was appointed.

“I heard it from Dearborn, I heard it from Mashburn. It was understood that we would be paid. The campaign never discussed how much the pay would be. It was never in writing,” another staffer told the newspaper.

“There were some people who were treating it as a full-time job. I suspect that those people were quite astonished when the pay didn’t come through.”

There were also workers who did not hold the policy shop’s leaders responsible.

“Rick Dearborn was always professional and forthcoming with me,” said the former policy coordinator.

“I was certainly under the expectation I would be paid at some point, but I don’t blame Rick Dearborn.”

The list of staffers who left the D.C. policy shop includes Ying Ma, a former staffer to Trump adviser Ben Carson; Tera Dahl, a former assistant to ex-Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.); J.D. Gordon, the shop’s director of national security; and conservative writer William Triplett, among others.

The staffers who remained in the Washington office are now working on a volunteer basis, the report added.

(h/t The Hill)

 

Donald Trump Even Refuses to Pay His Top Staff

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has run an unusually cheap campaign in part by not paying at least 10 top staffers, consultants and advisers, some of whom are no longer with the campaign, according to a review of federal campaign finance filings.

Those who have so far not been paid, the filings show, include recently departed campaign manager Paul Manafort, California state director Tim Clark, communications director Michael Caputo and a pair of senior aides who left the campaign in June to immediately go to work for a Trump Super PAC.

The New York real estate magnate and his allies have touted his campaign’s frugality, saying it is evidence of his management skills. His campaign’s spending has totaled $89.5 million so far, about a third of what Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign has spent.

But not compensating top people in a presidential campaign is a departure from campaign finance norms. Many of the positions involved might typically come with six-figure annual paychecks in other campaigns.

“It’s unprecedented for a presidential campaign to rely so heavily on volunteers for top management positions,” said Paul Ryan, an election lawyer with the campaign finance reform advocacy group Campaign Legal Center.

The Trump campaign said the Reuters’ reporting was “sloppy at best” but declined to elaborate.

One of the 10 who were unpaid, Michael Caputo, told a Buffalo radio station in June after he resigned from the campaign, that he was not volunteering. Rather, he said he just had not gotten paid. Caputo confirmed to Reuters on Thursday that the Trump campaign has still not paid his invoices.

In another instance, two high-level former Trump campaign advisers, former Chris Christie campaign manager Ken McKay and Manafort lobbying associate Laurance Gay, departed the Trump campaign in June and went to work for the Trump-backed Super PAC, Rebuilding America Now. In June, the Super PAC paid each of them $60,000, the filings show.

Federal campaign law stipulates that people working for campaigns, who may possess strategic knowledge of a campaign or work as a campaign’s agents, must wait for 120 days before going to work for a Super PAC, a political spending group that can accept unlimited sums of money from wealthy donors so long as it does not coordinate with a campaign.

Through a spokesperson, McKay and Gay said they were volunteering for Trump and did not possess strategic information so the rule did not apply to them.

Another example of free labor is Rick Gates, who was Manafort’s deputy. According to two former high-level Trump staffers, Gates essentially functioned as the Trump campaign manager for more than two months, all while not collecting a paycheck.

By contrast, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook earned roughly $10,000 in July, the same amount as President Barack Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina did in 2012. That same year, Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, was making nearly $7,000 bi-monthly.

Others who, according to the FEC filings, have not been paid include finance chairman Steven Mnuchin, national political director Rick Wiley and senior adviser Barry Bennett, who were not available for comment. Nor were Manafort, Gates and Clark.

Many campaigns have volunteers who work as low-level ground troops, knocking on voters’ doors and passing out campaign buttons. There are instances in other campaigns of senior staff opting not to draw a paycheck. For example, John Podesta, a longtime adviser to Clinton who is now her campaign chairman, considers his role honorary and does not draw a salary.

What is unusual, however, is for a campaign to have such a large group of people in top positions who are unpaid.

After Manafort resigned in August, Trump promoted his senior adviser and top pollster, Kellyanne Conway, to become his new campaign manager.

Before then, Conway ran a Super PAC affiliated with Texas Senator and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz. For work from June 2015 to June 2016, the Super PAC paid the firm she owns more than $700,000.

She officially joined the Trump campaign July 1. But so far, according to campaign finance reports that detail spending through July 31, Conway has not been paid by the Trump campaign.

She did not respond to a request for comment.

Reality

Donald Trump has had a long history of refusing payment to the little guys, contractors and employees, now it appears he won’t look out for the big guys either.

After Being Called Out Donald Trump Flip-Flips on Raising Federal Minimum Wage, Then Lies

Donald Trump says he backs raising the minimum wage to $10 per hour and that states should decide.

“Well, I would leave it and raise it somewhat,” the GOP presidential nominee told Bill O’Reilly on Fox News’s “The O’Reilly Factor” on Tuesday.

“You need to help people, and I know it’s not very Republican to say, but you need to help people,” he added.

“I would say $10, but with the understanding that somebody like me is going to bring back jobs, I don’t want people to be in that $10 category for very long. But the thing is, Bill, let the states make the deal. They’re not doing that for the most part.”Trump also accused former Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders of distorting his position on the issue.

“When Bernie Sanders said that I want to go less than what the minimum wage — I mean honestly, Bill, these people are lying so much and every fact checker said Trump never said that,” he said. “I never did say it. I believe it should be raised.”

(h/t The Hill)

Reality

However, Trump’s claim that he never wanted to go less then the minimum wage is a complete and total lie and we have the videos to prove it.

Trump’s public comments regarding wages being too high started in August, 2015 when during a speech he told Michigan auto workers right to their faces that they make too much money.

He said U.S. automakers could shift production away from Michigan to communities where autoworkers would make less. “You can go to different parts of the United States and then ultimately you’d do full-circle — you’ll come back to Michigan because those guys are going to want their jobs back even if it is less.”

Then during the 4th GOP debate on November 10th, 2015, Trump said he would lower the minimum wage during a Republican debate:

Taxes too high, wages too high.

And then on again on November 11th, 2015 during an interview with Fox News, Trump went the extra step to explain why wages are too high:

Whether it’s taxes or wages, if they’re too high we’re not going to be able to compete with other countries.

Is anyone really surprised that a billionaire businessman wants to keep American worker’s wages low?

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyZ3UhXhsg4

Hotel Fights Back After Trump Refuses To Pay

A Virginia hotel is fighting back against Donald Trump after the GOP presidential nominee criticized the air conditioning — or lack thereof — at a Monday event there.

“If we are in a ballroom, it’s not supposed to be so hot that everybody in the audience is using a fan,” Trump said during the campaign event at the Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center.

And he threatened to not pay his bill for the room — a frequent move by Trump’s companies when he says he receives inadequate service.

“You ought to try turning on the air conditioning or we are not going to get you paid,” Trump said. “I pay my bills so fast with somebody good. With somebody average, I pay them OK. With somebody great, a lot of times I give them bonuses … This is ridiculous.”

Attendees at the event appeared warm and uncomfortable, and laughed when Trump commented on the lack of air conditioning.

On Tuesday, the hotel pushed back, saying it had operated the air conditioning fully and pointing to the number of people in the room as the issue.

“The Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center is committed to providing exceptional service and accommodation for all guests and members of the community,” hotel spokesman Michael Quonce said in a statement. “The hotel’s HVAC system was on and working properly through the event. We made every effort to create a comfortable environment for all of our guests given soaring temperatures and a ballroom filled with hundreds of attendees.”

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(h/t CNN)

Reality

Separate investigations have found that Trump has a pattern of not paying or underpaying contractors and individuals he has worked with, alleging that the work was substandard. And lawsuits show Trump’s organization wages Goliath vs David legal battles over small amounts of money that are negligible to the billionaire and his executives — but devastating to his much-smaller foes.

Reports published by USA Today and The Wall Street Journal in June found Trump’s companies were facing hundreds of claims that Trump has stiffed people he contracted with for decades.

Both reports analyzed court records and interviewed the people behind the claims, and found that the average working American that Trump has geared his campaign toward are some of the same people his business hasn’t paid.

Often, the issue is settled out of court for less than the sum owed under the weight of costly legal proceedings.

Trump maintains that he pays for adequate service and even pays extra when work is performed exceptionally well.

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiGcveNDzvE

Judge Orders Trump to Pay Nearly $300,000 in Attorney’s Fees in Doral Painter’s Lawsuit

While developer Donald Trump was busy getting the Republican Party’s presidential nomination this week, he was losing big in a Miami-Dade County courtroom.

Circuit Court Judge Jorge Cueto, presiding over a lawsuit related to unpaid bills brought by a local paint store against the Trump National Doral Miami golf resort, ordered the billionaire politician’s company to pay the Doral-based mom-and-pop shop nearly $300,000 in attorney’s fees.

All because, according to the lawsuit, Trump allegedly tried to stiff The Paint Spot on its last payment of $34,863 on a $200,000 contract for paint used in the renovation of the home of golf’s famed Blue Monster two years ago.

Trump National’s insistence that it had “paid enough” for the paint despite a contract, according to the lawsuit, caused The Paint Spot to slap a lien on the property and Cueto to order the foreclosure sale of the resort.

In time, Donald Trump’s company got the judge to cancel the June 28 courthouse auction after it placed the $34,000 in escrow, and the case was put on hold while Trump National’s owner, Trump Endeavor, considered an appeal.

But the lien remained.

And Cueto was asked to rule on the fees for The Paint Spot’s three $500-an-hour attorneys and two $150-an-hour paralegals that lawsuit loser Trump Endeavor will have to pay.

The golf company, according to the court file, objected to the hourly rates because it paid its lawyers $400 an hour, according to court records.

This week, Cueto ruled that the fees were reasonable, and then some.

First, he ruled Trump should pay for nearly 500 hours of legal work, since the store’s legal team had to prepare for a trial that never took place.

Then, Cueto tacked on a 75 percent “risk” fee, partly because the store’s lawyers took the risk that they would never be paid if they lost.

Total: $282,949 and 91 cents, including copying and expert testimony.

“I’m happy I have a judgment,” said Juan Carlos Enriquez, owner of The Paint Spot. “But he [Trump] hasn’t paid yet.

“You know how he says he’ll surround himself with the greatest people if he is president? In this case, he might not be surrounded by the right people.”

Trump bought the property in 2012 for $150 million then launched into a major renovation.

Alan Garten, Trump’s in-house lawyer, didn’t return a call for comment.

(h/t The Miami Herald)

Update

Trump appealed but a state appeals court in Florida on Thursday affirmed a circuit court’s decision to order Trump National Doral Miami golf resort to pay a small paint company and its attorney hundreds of thousands of dollars after failing to pay a tenth of that for paint and other materials during a renovation project.

Trump To Pay Thousands For Retaliating Against Workers On Day He Accepts The GOP Nomination

Just a few hours before he officially accepts the presidential nomination of the Republican party, Donald Trump agreed to pay a $11,200 federal settlement for retaliating against workers who voted to unionize at his eponymous Las Vegas hotel.

Trump, who claims he “never settles” when sued, agreed to pay the workers after the National Labor Relations Board found that Trump’s corporation had unfairly challenged the union vote and illegally retaliated against the workers who led the organization effort. Trump must now pay back wages to two workers, one of whom the hotel fired and another who was denied a promotion for convincing her 500-plus co-workers to join the Culinary Workers Union in Las Vegas. Under the terms of the settlement, Trump did not admit breaking federal labor laws.

Workers at the hotel told reports at the LA Times that the Trump corporation threatened and intimidated them in the lead up to the union vote.

Trump co-owns the Vegas hotel with mogul Phil Ruffin, who took the podium Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland to extol Trump’s virtues as a boss.

“As a result of his vision, he’s put tens of thousands of American workers to work,” Ruffin said. “And these are high-paid jobs.”

But the workers employed at Trump’s Vegas hotel tell a different story.

Trump hotel housekeeper Maria Jaramillo told ThinkProgress in February that she is paid much less and has much fewer health benefits than workers at other hotels on the Las Vegas Strip.

“At Mandalay Bay I had health insurance for free, a retirement [account], every year I got a raise, I got holiday pay,” she said, explaining that she left that job to raise her children and couldn’t get it back. “Over here [at Trump International] we don’t get an [annual] raise, we have to pay for our insurance, and we have no retirement. It’s a big difference. I’m not making enough to give my kids a better future.”

The Trump International Hotel pays its workers, on average, $3 an hour less than the city’s other hotels. And while the company was forced by the National Labor Relations Board to recognize the union earlier this year, they have so far refused to begin negotiating a contract.

“We deserve one. We’re not second-class workers,” Jaramillo said.

Throughout his campaign, Trump has pitched himself as a friend of the working class, mainly by promising to stop the outsourcing of jobs to other countries. Yet that message may not be resonating in Cleveland, the host city of the RNC.

A group of local workers gathered on the eve of the convention on Sunday to denounce Trump’s record of repeatedly refusing to pay workers and contractors he has hired, of opposing a raise in the federal minimum wage, and of fighting workers’ attempts to organize.

“We’ve all heard Mr. Trump’s appeals to working people,” said Mike Kilbane, a lifelong Cleveland resident and construction worker. “But it’s a ruse, a smokescreen. It’s faux populism, a sad attempt to divide the working class in this country.”

Citing Trump’s dealings with his workers in Las Vegas and elsewhere, Kilbane continued: “This man is a card-carrying member of the ruling class, someone who has known privilege and entitlement his entire life. He puts his own personal gain and profit over any other consideration, and he’ll do anything to make sure it continues.”

(h/t Think Progress)

Links

Culinary Workers Union 226 article.

Trump’s Vegas Hotel Spent Half A Million Dollars To Stop Maids From Unionizing

GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump fashions himself a friend of union workers. He has bragged about having good relationships with labor unions. When the AFL-CIO recently endorsed his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, Trump claimed it was he who deserved the labor federation’s coveted backing.

“I believe [union] members will be voting for me in much larger numbers than for her,” Trump declared last month.

Before entering the voting booth, those union members might want to know how much money one of Trump’s businesses has spent in an effort to persuade low-wage workers not to unionize.

The Culinary Workers Union recently organized housekeepers and other service workers at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. The union won the election in December — but not without a fight from hotel owners Trump Ruffin Commercial LLC. That’s a joint venture between the likely GOP nominee and casino magnate Phil Ruffin, himself a major financial backer of Trump’s presidential run.

According to Labor Department disclosure forms reviewed by The Huffington Post, Trump Ruffin shelled out more than half a million dollars last year to a consulting firm that combats union organizing efforts. The money was paid from Trump Ruffin to Cruz & Associates in a series of seven payments between July and December, totaling $560,631.

Nearly $285,000 of that money was paid over the course of two weeks in December, shortly after the hotel held its union election.

Despite the heavy investment from Trump Ruffin, the union prevailed by a vote of 238 to 209. Trump Ruffin argued in a filing with the National Labor Relations Board that the union illegally swayed the vote, but a regional director for the NLRB rejected those claims. The hotel has asked that the board members in Washington review that decision. According to an NLRB spokeswoman, the board has not yet determined whether it will grant that review.

A lawyer for Trump and a campaign spokeswoman did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the payments. Lupe Cruz, the owner of Cruz & Associates, did not respond to a voicemail left at his office on Friday.

Cruz, himself a former union organizer, is known for his consulting work on behalf of employers battling unions. Trump Ruffin’s disclosure forms listed the payments to Cruz as being for “consultation services and employee educational meetings.”

Companies often enlist the services of anti-union consultants to deal with an organizing campaign. The consultants’ goal is to convince enough workers that forming a union would be against their best interests so that the union eventually loses the election. Unions derisively call these consultants “union busters.” Their tactics can be subtle or not so subtle. When companies retain such firms, they are required to disclose their payments in filings to the Labor Department.

While there’s nothing out of the ordinary about the Trump hotel’s use of labor consultants, the more than half a million dollars spent by the hotel is significant. (For perspective, another Trump enterprise — his presidential campaign — began the month of June with only $1.3 million on hand.) The large sum indicates just how badly hotel management wanted to keep workers from unionizing, despite Trump’s public claims that he is an ally of rank-and-file workers.

The billionaire has spent much of the last week trying to align himself with the downtrodden working class, particularly by speaking out against U.S. trade pacts with other countries. Trump and much of organized labor share the perspective that these have been raw deals for the average American worker.

At different points in his campaign, Trump has also boasted that as a business owner, he’s gotten along well with unions. “I’ve worked with unions over the years — I’ve done very well with unions,” he said at a town hall meeting in February. “And I have tremendous support within unions.”

But the Culinary Workers Union accused management at Trump’s hotel of violating labor law numerous times by allegedly retaliating against pro-union employees during the organizing campaign. The NLRB’s general counsel, who acts as a kind of prosecutor, found merit in many of those charges, accusing the hotel of illegally firing one worker and intimidating others. The labor board has not yet ruled on the matter.

The bargaining unit at Trump International in Las Vegas includes more than 500 housekeepers, restaurant employees and guest services workers, many of them Latino and Filipino. The union has urged the hotel to accept the election results and start bargaining over a first contract.

“We asked the company to sit down and bargain with us back in December, and they should have,” Bethany Khan, a union spokeswoman, previously told The Huffington Post. “They’re running out of time and options to delay this.”

The union claims that housekeepers at Trump’s hotel earn about $3 less per hour than housekeepers at other unionized hotels on the Vegas Strip.

(h/t Huffington Post)

Reality

And yet the candidate claims to be a friend of regular working people.

1 … 5 6 7 8