By Gustavo Veiga on April 14, 2020
Behind the 17 million suddenly unemployed in the United States and with a probability to increase, there are life stories, names and surnames, workers suffering on two fronts; unemployment and the threat of contracting the coronavirus, as it is in almost all the world. Donald Trump is well known for his indolence in the face of the pandemic, but not for his responsibility in increasing mass layoffs in his hotel chain in the U.S. and to a lesser extent in Canada. A little over a week ago, 1,500 of his workers were thrown off their jobs or suspended, although with one peculiarity. Many of Trump’s workers are migrants with or without papers, cheap labor that the president of the still first world power uses in his organization devoted to tourism.
Last Friday the New York Times published an extensive article in which it described several hardship cases caused by the tycoon’s decisions. This employer is unique because while he fires hundreds of his own workers at the same time as head of state he is generating a stampede of unemployment throughout the country. Journalist Rosa Townsend wrote a column in the Miami Herald where she described him as, “Donald Trump has failed in the most solemn function of a president, protecting the people, to save himself. That will be his legacy.”
Up to now the 17 million people who lost their jobs in the last three weeks, is the worst in U.S.
Seventeen hotels and clubs in the Trump Emporium have now closed – at least for now – since the unleashing of COVID-19. The president has contributed as an entrepreneur to spreading unemployment and as president to the pandemic with his ineffective, erratic, quasi-criminal policy, which is costing thousands of lives. In that context, his network left hundreds of workers on the streets in Washington, New York, Chicago and Las Vegas in the U.S., but also some 200 additional employees in Vancouver, Canada.
How will the situation be that even Forbes, the publication that shows profiles of the rich and famous, ridiculed him in a note for counting the donations made by billionaires to stop the virus that is plaguing the world. While praising the likes Bill Gates or Mexico’s Carlos Slim, Trump argued that “on March 23, those restrictions be reduced to revive the economy in weeks, instead of the three or four months recommended by doctors and public health experts to save as many lives as possible. The results are there for all to see. The U.S. as of Monday night counted 586,057 infected and 23,227 dead.
Forbes isn’t the only media that left the president naked. The New York Times points out that the “America First” slogan, one of the most repeated by the president, clashes with Trump’s hiring policy: “its employees have foreign passports,” the newspaper said. The lengthy article added, “This group of employees is an embarrassing reality for a president who has lashed out at immigrants who are in the country illegally, a truth that his company is trying to hide under the rug.
The mogul’s chain offers, among other things, the services of a sumptuous resort that is described as follows: “The five-star hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, is a 64-story, glass-enclosed tower that houses 1,232 beautifully furnished, non-smoking rooms and 50 luxurious penthouse suites. Each room has floor-to-ceiling windows that offer extensive panoramic views of the city with a majestic backdrop of the surrounding mountains. Our luxury hotel rooms also feature contemporary furnishings, full state-of-the-art kitchens and pet-friendly amenities.”
Hundreds of migrants from various countries worked or were working in these facilities until the arrival of the coronavirus: El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras from Central America, but also South Africa, Romania and neighboring Mexico. The official agency Notimex counted some 1,500 victims who now will try to seek unemployment insurance but only if they have a migration status that allows them to do so. This is not the case of those who “were picked up on the side of the road by Trump’s contractors from among the groups of day laborers who entered the country without authorization”, described by the Times.
Other information published in the U.S. said that all Las Vegas hotels donated food and rooms for emergency personnel in the casino city. But there was one that refused: the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. Testimonies from former employees who passed through the chain began to expose the exploitation to which they were subjected. Last March, the president of the United States tried to reverse the burden of proof and fell victim to a reality that was beginning to get out of control. He asked the journalists if the crisis was hurting him and he answered himself, “Yes, it is hurting me, and it is hurting all the big hotel chains in the world.”
Trump’s company, which is actually run by his son Eric, has temporarily closed its Las Vegas hotel, cut back on staff and services in New York and Washington, and locked down its golf clubs in New Jersey and the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. The latter was staffed by undocumented workers that were exploited by the head of state and from which his company has gradually been divested.
Source: Pagina 12, Translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau