An Ozone Park man who previously served Donald Trump as his chauffeur for 25 years says that the president owes him bigly in unpaid overtime wages.
Attorneys for Noel Cintron filed a lawsuit on July 9 against the Trump Corporation and Trump Tower Commercial LLC seeking more than $350,000 in back overtime pay incurred over the last six years of his employment to Trump and his companies. The New York Daily News first reported the story.
According to the lawsuit, which the Daily Mail uploaded to its Scribd account, Cintron worked for Trump’s companies for 25 years as Trump’s personal driver, jetting the real estate mogul, his family members and colleagues around the city. Cintron lost those responsibilities to the U.S. Secret Service in 2016 after Trump became the Republican presidential nominee, but he continued to serve Trump as a member of his personal security detail.
While working as Trump’s chauffeur, the lawsuit noted, Cintron generally worked between 50 and 55 hours a week, beginning his shift at 7 a.m. and ending whenever the Trumps no longer needed his services. Cintron earned $62,700 a year in 2003, and his annual pay was increased to $68,000 three years later. Cintron claims that Trump bumped up his salary to $75,000, but only after he was compelled to surrender his health benefits — which saved Trump’s companies more than $17,000 per year in contributions.
Even so, according to the lawsuit, Cintron maintained that neither the Trump Corporation nor Trump Tower Commercial LLC ever paid him proper overtime wages for hours worked above 40 hours per week, as required by law. Employees who work above 40 hours per week must be paid 1 1/2 times their hourly wage for every overtime hour.
Attorneys Larry Hutcher and Josh Krakowsky of the Manhattan-based firm Davidoff Hutcher & Citron LLP said in the complaint that now-President Trump, through his companies, “exploited and denied significant wages to his own longstanding personal driver.” They further called the alleged actions “an utterly callous display of unwarranted privilege and entitlement, and without even a minimal sense of noblesse.”
The Trump Corporation responded to the lawsuit in a statement released to multiple media outlets.
“Mr. Cintron was at all times paid generously and in accordance with the law,” according to the statement, which Bloomberg News attributed to Trump Corporation spokesperson Amanda Miller. “Once the facts come out, we expect to be fully vindicated in court.”
