Category: Jobs

Horrific Living Conditions for Migrants Building Trump Dubai Golf Course

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Immigrant workers in Dubai building a golf course bearing Donald Trump’s name are packed in labor camps that are low even by the city’s “unbelievably low standards,” according to a report aired by Vice in April.

“The conditions of the guys building the Trump International Golf Course were the worst I’ve ever seen,” said correspondent Ben Anderson. “Having guys live 21 to a room with rats running around above them; having to work extremely hard in extreme heat for two years just to break even, just to pay off the debts they accrued getting there.”

During his report, Anderson tailed a group of buses taking workers back to their camp after working on the course. The camp, he learned, was two hours outside of Dubai in an area that lacked even an access road. One worker said he earned $231 a month, but could not leave because the company that contracted him took his passport.

Besides being stuffed into dormitories, he said, workers had to make do with restrooms that “didn’t look fit for human beings.”

Their working situation, Anderson explained, was described by Human Rights Watch officials as looking “like a trafficking network.”

According to the Daily Beast, the golf course is not being built directly by a company belonging to the Republican presidential candidate, which released a statement saying it has “a zero tolerance policy for unlawful labor practices at any project bearing the ‘Trump’ name.”

Anderson said the horrific conditions workers endure in Dubai are endemic to the United Arab Emirates, where service workers are particularly in danger of mistreatment.

“Trump is just the latest in a long line of Westerners who have gone there, taken — I assume — large amounts of money and turned a blind eye to something which is very obvious and very well-documented,” he said.

(h/t Vice, Raw Story)

Media

Links

Vice episode on HBO Go and HBO Now.

Trump: Transgender People Can Use Whatever Bathroom They Want

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Donald Trump answers questions on transgender bathroom use.

Transgender people should be able to use whatever bathroom they want, Donald Trump said Thursday.

“Oh, I had a feeling that question was going to come up, I will tell you. North Carolina did something that was very strong. And they’re paying a big price. There’s a lot of problems,” the Republican presidential candidate said during a town hall event on NBC’s “Today.”

Referring to comments from an unnamed commentator who on Wednesday said North Carolina should “leave it the way it is right now,” Trump said he agreed.

“Leave it the way it is. North Carolina, what they’re going through with all the business that’s leaving, all of the strife — and this is on both sides. Leave it the way it is,” he said, referring to companies that have canceled plans to move or expand businesses in the state as a result of the law, which bans transgender individuals from using a bathroom that does not match their gender at birth.

“There have been very few complaints the way it is. People go. They use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate,” Trump said. “There has been so little trouble. And the problem with what happened in North Carolina is the strife and the economic — I mean, the economic punishment that they’re taking.”

Matt Lauer then asked whether Trump has any transgender people working for his company.

“I really don’t know. I probably do. I really don’t know,” Trump said, answering that he would allow, say, transgender celebrity Caitlyn Jenner to use whatever bathroom she wanted at Trump Tower.

He added, “You know, there’s a big move to create new bathrooms. Problem with that is for transgender, that would be—first of all, I think that would be discriminatory in a certain way. That would be unbelievably expensive for businesses in the country. Leave it the way it is.”

(h/t Politico, Today)

Reality

Trump has been a little more progressive with LGBT rights in the past, for example allowing Jenna Talackova to compete in the 2012 Miss Universe Canada pageant, but he also is not progressive, in the same interview telling a joke comparing her name to “genitals”. He also supported amending the Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

However it is important to remember that Trump still supports traditional marriage.

Ted Cruz directly responded to Trump’s comments in a very Ted Cruz way.

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Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Hires Hundreds of Foreign Workers

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Trump Mar a Lago resort

Here’s Donald Trump’s dilemma: He is running for president on a platform of bringing jobs back to the U.S. and making America Great again.

But at his private club in south Florida, he has filled his staff almost exclusively with imported foreign workers. And he has been doing it for years.

 The U.S. Department of Labor has confirmed to CNN that between 2013 and fall 2015, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club posted 250 seasonal job openings and filled just 4 of those jobs with American workers. The club requested the rest of the staff be temporarily imported through the Federal government’s H-2B visa process. Basically, Mar-a-Lago brings in its seasonal staff from overseas

From 2013 to 2015, Mar-a-Lago was approved to hire 246 foreign workers by the U.S. Department of Labor with H-2B visas, which allow U.S. employers to temporarily import foreign workers to fill non-agricultural jobs that can’t be filled with Americans.

To get approval for H-2B visas, employers must prove they need extra workers and that they made an effort to recruit domestic workers, contacted everyone who responded to ads and hired all qualified applicants. After receiving approval, employers must petition U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to bring foreign, temporary workers into the country.

Trump has made the case that he couldn’t find American workers. “It’s almost impossible to get help,” the Republican presidential candidate told CNN last month. “And part of the reason you can’t get American people is they want full time jobs.”

Links

http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/18/news/economy/trump-maralago/index.html

Ivanka Trump Brand Also Outsourced

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Ivanka Trump line made in China

On the campaign trail Trump has made slowing or stopping the outsourcing of jobs to other countries a major talk point. However it has been pointed out that Trump also engages in outsourcing and this also extends to the his Ivanka Trump brand, which included dresses, purses, shoes and other accessories that reflect Trump’s daughter’s taste.

Of the 838 Ivanka products advertised through the trump.com, none appear to be made exclusively in the U.S.; 628 are said to be “imported” and 354 made specifically in China.

Reality

If you are an American economist who believes that international trade is good for the U.S., there is nothing wrong with what the Trumps have been doing. Indeed, he and his daughter have been providing Americans with products they want at relatively low prices. But how do you reconcile a business model based on importing with professions of deep belief that manufacturing should be brought back to America?

Links

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/column-trumps-outrage-over-outsourcing-doesnt-apply-to-his-own-merchandise/

Trump Declares Wages Are ‘Too High’

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GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump opened the 4th primetime GOP debate by suggesting that Americans’ wages are “too high” and that it’s part of a problem with the country’s competitiveness.

“Taxes too high, wages too high,” he said, responding to a question about New York state’s decision to raise the minimum wage for certain workers to $15. “We’re not going to be able to compete against the world.”

Trump rejected calls to raise the minimum wage. His rival for pole position in the Republican primary, Ben Carson, agreed.

“I would not raise it specifically because I’m interested in making sure that people are able to enter the job market and take advantage of opportunities,” he said.

Trump later doubled-down on his wage too high stance and also explained it right to the faces of auto workers.

(h/t Politico)

Reality

Is anyone really surprised that a billionaire businessman wants to keep wages low?

According to the Pew Research Center, real wages are not at all high and instead have been stagnant for decades. This means we’ve seen bigger paychecks, but that paycheck goes far less than before when buying stuff.

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Trump Wrongly Takes Credit for Ford Plants in Mexico

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Donald Trump took credit for Ford Motor Co. deciding not to build new plants in Mexico. The only issue with that: Ford is going ahead with its plans to build south of the border.

Trump first retweeted a link to an article with the headline, “Trump successfully pressures Ford to move Mexican plant to Ohio.”

The article cited a CNNMoney report (with no link) that Ford is relocating its facility from Mexico to Youngstown, Ohio. However a spokeswoman for the company told The Washington Post that Ford does not have any plans for a plant in Youngstown.

In his perceived triumph, Trump took to Twitter to take sole credit for creating American jobs and looking out for the little guy.

Trump then followed up with another grammatically incorrect tweet asking a rhetorical question, dismissed that question, and finally asking us to imagine a world where that rhetorical question could actually be factual:

Finally Trump shouted to the heavens with a final tweet:

“FORD LISTENED TO ME, GREAT!”

(h/t Politico)

Reality

Trump lied.

Ford never had plans to build a new plant in Ohio and Ford never changed their expansion plans to continue building a plant south of the border. Ford did have plans to shift assembly of some of their truck lines to their existing Avon Lake, Ohio plant. But that decision was made in 2011, a full 4 years before any candidate announced their intention to run for U.S. president.

As Northeast Ohio Media Group reported, the Donald Trump appears to have confused the automobile manufacturer’s expansion plan south of the border with the company’s decision to start production of medium-duty pickups that had previously been manufactured in Mexico. Production began four years after Ohio Gov. John Kasich, another presidential candidate, pushed tax incentives that included breaks for Ford’s plant in Avon Lake, Ohio, about 90 miles from Youngstown.

Trump Vows to Never Eat Oreo Cookies Again

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Trump versus oreo cookies

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump confirmed on Tuesday that he will stop eating Oreos, a decision he came to after Nabisco parent company Mondelez International, announced last month that it’s replacing production lines in Chicago with new ones at a plant in Salinas, Mexico.

“I’m never eating Oreos again,” Trump said on Tuesday, reaffirming statements he first made last week at a rally in Alabama, where he said, “Mexico is the new China . . . I love Oreos. I will never eat them again. Nabisco closes the plant in Chicago and they are moving the plant to Mexico.”

Reality

Mondelez is not closing the Chicago plant, but it is cutting 600 jobs there as a result of the new investment in Mexico, the Associated Press reports. A spokesperson for Mondelez told the Associated Press that the company’s new investment of $130 million in Mexico is an effort to save production costs, as the new lines in Mexico will cost $46 million less per year than those in Chicago. Only two of the four new lines will make Oreo cookies.

Jobs moving out of the United States has been one of Trump’s signature positions and has struck a cord with his supporters. The irony is not lost that voters believe that a billionaire businessman would save them from billionaire businessmen.

Media

Links

http://fortune.com/2015/08/26/donald-trump-oreos/

http://www.factcheck.org/2015/11/about-trumps-oreo-boycott/

Trump Believes Auto Workers Make Too Much Money

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Donald Trump has something to say to Detroit autoworkers: you make too much money. Talking about U.S. vehicle manufacturers moving production to Mexico in an interview with The Detroit News, Trump said this:

He said U.S. automakers could shift production away from Michigan to communities where autoworkers would make less. “You can go to different parts of the United States and then ultimately you’d do full-circle — you’ll come back to Michigan because those guys are going to want their jobs back even if it is less,” Trump said. “We can do the rotation in the United States — it doesn’t have to be in Mexico.”He said that after Michigan “loses a couple of plants — all of sudden you’ll make good deals in your own area.”

Reality

Trump is, of course, dead wrong about this. The article goes on to say, “Although wages are lower at non-union U.S. plants owned by foreign automakers, hourly employees for Detroit’s Big Three are paid the same no matter what state they’re in, under the terms of United Auto Workers contracts.”

Links

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/8/14/1412018/-Donald-Trump-to-Detroit-autoworkers-you-make-too-much-money

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2015/08/12/trump-autos/31589899/

Trump Singles Out Ford Automotive For Tax Increase

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Trump said he backs government tax incentives to keep auto production in the United States. He said the U.S. shouldn’t open its market to Japanese imports unless it drops trade barriers.

The United States has lost more than 5 million factory jobs since 2000; Michigan has shed more than one-third of its manufacturing jobs since then. In an appeal to blue-collar workers, Trump vows to keep the more than 12 million manufacturing jobs in the U.S.

“We’ve got to keep (factories) here. It’s not that hard to do,” he said. Without action, he added, “pretty soon all we’re going to have is nursing home jobs.”

Trump has repeatedly said that if elected, he would not allow Ford to open a new plant in Mexico. At his campaign announcement speech in New York in June, Trump said he would call Fields to explain the “bad news.”

“Let me give you the bad news: Every car, every truck and every part manufactured in this plant that comes across the border, we’re going to charge you a 35 percent tax,” Trump said. “They are going to take away thousands of jobs.”

Ford confirmed that Fields sent Trump an email the day after his announcement speech. Spokesman Karl Henkel said: “Mark sent Mr. Trump an email with information about Ford, including the $6.2 billion we have invested in our U.S. plants since 2011 and our hiring of nearly 25,000 U.S. employees. Mr. Trump thanked us for the information and said that Ford is a great company and that he is a Ford customer. We appreciate his kind words.”

Trump said Fields’ email didn’t change his views about the expansion. He called it a “very, very nice letter,” but said it didn’t justify “how it is going to be good for the United States, because that cannot be justified.”

Reality

There is no legal avenue to single out one company for punitive taxes. The highlights Donald Trump’s lack of familiarity with United States laws.

Links

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2015/08/12/trump-autos/31589899/

Trump Companies Use and Commit Fraud on H-1B Visa Workers

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While Trump has bashed the H-1B visa program in multiple debates and makes lowering the number of H-1B visas a top policy decision for his immigration reform.

Increase prevailing wage for H-1Bs. We graduate two times more Americans with STEM degrees each year than find STEM jobs, yet as much as two-thirds of entry-level hiring for IT jobs is accomplished through the H-1B program. More than half of H-1B visas are issued for the program’s lowest allowable wage level, and more than eighty percent for its bottom two. Raising the prevailing wage paid to H-1Bs will force companies to give these coveted entry-level jobs to the existing domestic pool of unemployed native and immigrant workers in the U.S., instead of flying in cheaper workers from overseas. This will improve the number of black, Hispanic and female workers in Silicon Valley who have been passed over in favor of the H-1B program. Mark Zuckerberg’s personal Senator, Marco Rubio, has a bill to triple H-1Bs that would decimate women and minorities.

Requirement to hire American workers first. Too many visas, like the H-1B, have no such requirement. In the year 2015, with 92 million Americans outside the workforce and incomes collapsing, we need companies to hire from the domestic pool of unemployed. Petitions for workers should be mailed to the unemployment office, not USCIS.

Ut-Oh!

Not only was Donald Trump extensively using the H-1B visa program for his own companies, he tried to import at least 1,100 foreign workers, and he has been accused of fraud and treating models at his model agency “like a slave.”

 

Links

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/immigration-reform

Donald Trump’s companies tried to import at least 1,100 foreign workers

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-model-felt-slave-working-donalds-agency/story?id=37313993

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