Undocumented workers employed at one of Donald Trump's golf clubs say they were urged to do unpaid "side work" by their superiors."
The Washington Post reported that workers at the Trump National Golf Club Westchester in Briarcliff Manor, New York were instructed to clock out but stay on and work until their tasks were complete.
“It was that way with all the managers: Many of them told us, ‘Just clock out and then stay and do the side work,’ ”Jose Gabriel Juarez, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who worked at the country club for a decade before leaving last year, said. “There was a lot of side work.”
Juarez was one of six former Trump workers who told the Post they were "cheated" out of the same promotions, vacation and health insurance packages as their legal counterparts. He was also one of two who claimed they were told to do the unpaid "side work," with another two ex-employees who "said managers made them work 60-hour weeks without paying them overtime."
New York Attorney General Letitia James is now investigating "allegations that workers were routinely shortchanged on their pay at President Trump’s suburban country club," the Post noted.
The Trump Organization denied the allegations, but Juarez was nonetheless one of nearly 30 former Trump golf course employees who met with New York prosecutors earlier in 2019.
Ex-Trump club workers "handed over pay stubs and W-2 forms and answered questions about their salaries, hours, tips and lack of benefits in one-on-one interviews over many hours, according to several workers," the report noted, adding that "some have follow-up meetings scheduled in coming weeks."
A former manager who spoke to the Post on condition of anonymity said that because the club's bosses in Manhattan consistently pushed for a reduction in overtime costs, the club found a "solution" — to pressure the undocumented workers to clock out and keep working without pay.
The message to the undocumented workers, according to this former manager was: “You want to be here? Don’t clock in for overtime. Clock out, and work off the clock.”
“There was a conscious effort to pay less wages, because [the higher-ups] knew about the lack of documents,” the ex-manager added. “You know, where are they going to go?”
The former manager added that this practice was used when Dan Scavino, the current White House social media director, was general manager of the Westchester country club.
“To my knowledge, Trump National is in compliance with the relevant state and federal labor laws, and during my employment, which was SIX YEARS ago, I was personally unaware of any violations of those laws,” Scavino told the Post in a written statement that, according to the report, was issued through the White House press shop. “If such violations occurred and I had been aware, I would have immediately addressed it, and stopped them.”
Read the entire report via the Post.
