NEW YORK, NY — President Donald Trump’s onetime personal driver is giving his firms a ride to court. The driver, Noel Cintron of Queens, sued two Trump companies Monday for 3,300 hours in unpaid overtime in the last six years.
The lawsuit alleges that the Trump Organization and Trump Tower Commercial LLC have only given Cintron two raises in a 15-year period and exploited the driver, who worked up to 55 hours a week chauffeuring the real-estate-mogul-turned-president and his associates.
The suit in Manhattan Supreme Court was first reported by Bloomberg. It names the two companies as defendants but not the president as an individual.
“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,” the complaint says.
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Cintron worked as Trump’s personal driver for more than two decades until the Secret Service took over the role, the suit says. Since then he “has rendered services as a member of the Trump security staff,” the complaint says.
Cintron generally drove five days a week from 7 a.m. “to whenever Donald Trump, his family or business associates no longer required plaintiff’s services,” the suit says.
He “was forced to work thousands of hours” of overtime in his time as Trump’s driver, the suit says, but a statute of limitations only allows him to seek recompense for unpaid overtime for the past six years.
The president’s companies have also given Cintron just two raises since 2003, according to the suit. Most recently, in 2010, his salary increased to $75,000 from $68,000, but only because he was “induced to surrender” his health benefits, the suit says.
That saved the Trump companies more than $17,000 a year in health insurance premiums, the complaint says, and Cintron has not gotten any raises since.
“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!” the suit says.
Cintron is owed about $350,000 in back wages, legal fees and interest, his lawyer, Larry Hutcher, told the New York Daily News. The suit also accuses Trump’s companies of forcing Cintron to give up vacation and sick days without compensation, failing to reimburse him for charges, and failing to provide proper wage notices and accurate wage statements.
A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization told Bloomberg that the company expects to be “fully vindicated in court.”
“Mr. Cintron was at all times paid generously and in accordance with the law,” the spokeswoman, Amanda Miller, told Bloomberg in a statement.
(Lead image: Trump Tower is pictured in Manhattan. Photo courtesy of Ciara McCarthy/Patch)
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