When Donald Trump said,
‘I Grew Up in New York, I know Many Puerto Ricans’,
He was correct.
He walked by them on the street every day.
It’s like he knows Polish people because between 1979 and 1980, to to demolish an old building to make room for Trump Tower, Trump hired a contractor who, in order to meet Trump’s deadline, added to his union workers by using 200 undocumented laborers from Poland, the “Polish Brigade.”
The Polish workers were off-the-books getting four or five dollars per hour for twelve hour days with no days off or overtime. Some workers were never paid what they were owed.
Union members later sued a union boss, Trump, and his contractor for hiring the Polish workers and, thereby, cheating the union out of pension and welfare funds.
Trump was accused of owing the union pension fund $1 million.
As he continues to do now, Trump blamed other people, the contractor, and denied knowing that the Polish workers were undocumented.
“Nobody’s proven to me that they were were illegal.”
Trump ended up owing the workers $325,000 plus interest, attorney’s fees, and costs as the result of a court decision, but he then began an appeal process that lasted ten years.
Trump insisted that he didn’t know about the legal status of the Polish Brigade and, therefore, rejected, on principle, the idea of settling out of court with them.
A retrial could have resulted in Trump having to shell out $4 million, so he settled for an undisclosed amount as the agreement is sealed.
He once proclaimed,
“I don’t settle cases. I don’t get sued because I don’t settle cases, I win in court.”
But, I digress.
For the record, Trump and his businesses have settled with plaintiffs in at least 100 cases with settlements ranging from as high as hundreds of thousands of dollars to tens of millions.
Last spring, as foreign worker visas were made more difficult to come by, Trump’s son sought an exemption so foreign workers could be hired to work at the Trump Winery, apparently to avoid having to hire American workers at American wages, and thus aiding and abetting in foreigners stealing jobs from Americans.
However, the exemption was denied, so we have no idea, like with Puerto Ricans and Poles, what other group of people Donald Trump might have come to know.