President Trump employed 200 undocumented Polish workers who were paid as little as $4 an hour to demolish a department store where Trump Tower now stands, according to newly unsealed court documents.
In 1980, Trump enlisted the crew of undocumented immigrants to work back-breaking shifts that lasted upwards of 16 hours a day without gloves, hard hats or masks as they demolished the Bonwit Teller building on Fifth Ave., the New York Times reported.
Despite claims he doesn’t settle lawsuits, Trump paid a $1.375 million settlement in 1998 — after the class-action labor lawsuit dragged on for 15 years, according to the court documents that were unsealed last week after nearly two decades.
The Daily News first reported that the long-lost documents had been found in July after Time Inc. unearthed them in 2016, and filed a motion to unseal them along with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Last week, Loretta Preska, a U.S. District Court judge for the Southern District, ruled in favor of the motion, saying the public had a right to know given the defendant is currently the President.
Trump hired the contractor William Kaszycki for the demolition job, and later testified in court saying he never knew undocumented immigrants were working for him.
But a foreman Zbignew Goryn told the court Trump visited the work site and told him, “Those Polish guys are good, hard workers.”
Wojciech Kozak, now a 75-year-old naturalized citizen, recalled the “horrible, terrible conditions” demolishing the department store.
“We were working 12, 16 hours a day and were paid $4 an hour. Because I worked with an acetylene torch, I got $5 an hour. We worked without masks. Nobody knew what asbestos was. I was an immigrant. I worked very hard,” Kozak said.
When Kaszycki stopped paying the workers, they enlisted the help of lawyer John Szabo.
Trump, eager to have his namesake tower meet deadlines, tried negotiating with the workers at first, according to one testimony.
He also threatened to call Immigration and Naturalization Service to have the men deported, according to Szabo.
Of the $1.375 million settlement, $500,000 went to a union benefits fund. The rest paid for lawyers’ fees and expenses.
lmao….”He also threatened to call Immigration and Naturalization Service to have the men deported, according to Szabo.”
NYC divorce: call immigration dept. on your wife. First time I head of it being used to avoid paying workers.
There were a lot of Polish immigrants at that time, and they were used for all the hard, unskilled labor on construction sites, like every other immigrant group before them, but I think even my tightwad boss paid ’em more than $4 per hour.
So what were a whole lot of Polish immigrants doing in the US in 1980? Questions: 1, wasn’t Lech Walensa running Poland at the time and getting rid of Communism (so says the media, right?), 2. Wasn’t the new Pope (after the murder of Pope John Paul 1) Polish? 3. if Poland was “liberated” from hard-line Communism, why would a lot of Polish folks leave Poland for 4 dollars an hour, which was likely just above minimum wage in 1980–don’t construction workers make at least triple the minimum wage? As for Trump paying such a low wage, well, if Jeff Bezos can do it….This kinda thing sounds like stories of Pakistani workers “being promised: good jobs in Saudi Arabia or UAE (home of slave labor building 2018 World Cup buildings), only to be totally exploited by low life oligarchs like Trump. Meanwhile, low life oligarchs like Trump complain about all the “useless eaters” in the world…
Funny, I was just thinking about Lech Walensa the other day?! I always thought of the Berlin wall coming down as an open symbol of communism stabbing westward, not the gay-ass phony notion of ronny raygun’s amerikan freedumb. It was more of a kickoff for open warfare on US, as it seemed the veil was lifted and they were now no longer operating in secrecy but in plain view.