Labor Laws Hurt Workers the Most – Ep. 371

Trump Driver is Suing the Trump Organization
On thing I talked about on the Joe Rogan podcast was a story that broke the same day of my last podcast, which I thought was very interesting.  It was about Donald Trump being sued by his former personal driver, who still works for the Trump organization, by the way, he's worked there for over 25 years until Trump became President and got a tax-payer provided driver, he had to pay his own driver.  I think the guy was getting a $70K/year salary, which to me seems about right.
Diver Claims He is Due Overtime
The driver sued the Trump organization because he claims that he was due overtime, and he didn't get paid overtime. Now he's worked for the Trump organization for 25 years.  He has known his pay all these years and never once complained and now after 25 years he wants to use the labor laws to retroactively force the Trump organization to give him a pay hike.
Terms and Conditions of Employment
First of all, he is not an hourly employee.  It's not like he is punching a clock and the organization asks him to work overtime. According to the article I read, the driver needed to be on call for Trump something like 10-11 hours a day. Maybe 55 hours a week he was on call in case Trump needed him. That does not mean he was driving all that time; he just had to be accessible to Trump. He couldn't go on a vacation or leave town, but he could watch a movie, he could read a book, he could trade stocks on the internet, he could do whatever he wanted.  He had plenty of free time between times he drove for Trump. He knew exactly what the deal was and he chose to work under these conditions.

What happens in America is that employees like to go back in time and re-write the deal more favorably to them. If this driver did not like the terms of his employment, he had two options:

* He could have gone to Donald Trump and said, "I'm working on call 10 hours a day - that's more than a normal 8-hour job, you're paying me $70K/year, If you want me to be on call that many hours, you need to pay me more money. Then Trump would have had two options - pay more money or find another driver.
* If the driver did not like his employment conditions of that job, the compensation package, the amount of hours he had to be available, he was free to drive for somebody else.