Trump’s Personal Driver Sues After He Wasn’t Paid for Thousands of Overtime Hours

Donald Trump’s personal driver Noel Cintron filed a lawsuit last week over 3,300 hours of overtime in the past six years that he claims Trump never paid him for. However, Cintron has worked for Trump for the past 25 years and is unable to sue for all of his missing overtime pay, due to the statute of limitations.

As Trump’s personal driver, Cintron’s work week for the past 25 years was Monday through Friday starting at 7 a.m. each day. Overall, he worked 50 to 55 hours per week. He claims he worked 550 hours of overtime every year but was not paid an overtime wage for those hours. He also claims that he worked on holidays and his vacation days, but was not properly paid for those hours.

Not only does Cintron claim that Trump failed to pay him for his well-deserved overtime, but he also refused to give him a “meaningful raise” in over 10 years. His last documented raise was in 2010 when his salary was bumped up from $68,000 to $75,000. However, in order to receive that pay increase, Cintron had to “surrender his health benefits obtained through Trump, saving Trump approximately $17,866.08 per year in health insurance premiums,” Cintron said. “President Trump’s further callousness and cupidity is further demonstrated by the fact that while he is purportedly a billionaire, he has not given his personal driver a meaningful raise in over 12 years!”

Now, the Secret Service has taken over Cintron’s driving responsibilities and he wants to be paid for the years of service he provided to Trump. Cintron’s complaint reads:

In an utterly callous display of unwarranted privilege and entitlement and without even a minimal sense of noblesse oblige President Donald Trump has, through the defendant entities, exploited and denied significant wages to his own longstanding personal driver.

A spokesperson for the Trump Organization responded by releasing a statement which said, “Mr. Cintron was at all times paid generously and in accordance with the law. Once the facts come out we expect to be fully vindicated in court.”

However, Cintron isn’t the first of Trump’s employees to sue him over the years, claiming that he failed to pay them. Trump has a history of not paying employees and contractors. Just last year, a supply company claimed they were never paid for paint that was used to re-paint Trump’s luxury golf resort. Trump was ordered by an appeals court to pay the company $32,000. In 1980, Trump was involved in a major lawsuit when he demolished the Bonwit Teller building in New York City in order to build Trump Tower. He paid a crew of 200 undocumented Polish construction workers less than $4 a day, if he paid them at all. The workers demolished the building in extremely dangerous conditions and were not given gloves, hard hats or masks. Trump had to pay $1,375 to settle the case. Finally, according to a USA Today investigation, Trump has received over 3,500 official complaints after failing to pay his employees.

From dishwashers to painters and personal drivers, many people who’ve worked for Trump seem to be missing money. Cintron is the latest on a long list of unpaid employees and contractors whom Trump refuses to pay, despite his self-proclaimed billionaire status. While Cintron will have to fight for the money he rightfully earned in court, our tax dollars will pay for Trump’s new drivers so he can really be a cheapskate. One wonders about the main reason Trump wanted to be President in the first place.