Former workers at Donald Trump-owned properties have insisted in sworn court documents that the Republican presidential nominee wanted only “good looking hostesses” working for him, a newspaper reported Thursday.
The Los Angeles Times said, however, that an attorney for the Trump Organization called the allegations “meritless.”
But that’s not what the newspaper found in the allegations filed in a number of court cases through the years.
“I had witnessed Donald Trump tell managers many times while he was visiting the club that restaurant hostesses were ‘not pretty enough’ and that they should be fired and replaced with more attractive women,” Hayley Strozier alleged in a sworn declaration. She had been director of catering at the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes until 2008.
Because Trump said this “almost every time” he visited, Strozier said managers ended up changing work schedules “so that the most attractive women were scheduled to work when Mr. Trump was scheduled to be at the club.”
The Times said a “similar story is told by former Trump employees in court documents filed in 2012 in a broad labor relations lawsuit brought against one of Trump’s development companies in Los Angeles County Superior Court.”
According to the newspaper, employee’s declarations supporting the lawsuit have not previously been reported “in detail.”
Despite the workers’ assertions, the Times cited a 2009 court filing in which Trump’s company said that any “allegedly wrongful or discriminatory acts” by employees, if such acts took place, were against company policy and not authorized.
But a restaurant manager at the club apparently disagreed.
“Donald Trump always wanted good looking women working at the club,” according to Sue Kwiatkowski, a restaurant manager at the club until 2009.
The Times quoted her from court documents as swearing, “I know this because one time he took me aside and said, ‘I want you to get some good looking hostesses here. People like to see good looking people when they come in.”
Based on that direction, she said managers always “tried to have our most attractive hostesses working when Mr. Trump was in town and going to be on the premises.”
The Times noted that Trump has “struggled” to gain support from women voters, and in public has insulted some women, calling them “pigs” or “dogs.” His Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton said that Trump had insulted a Miss Universe for being too fat and calling her “Miss Piggy.”
The Times provided other details on allegations and most of the lawsuit over the golf club was settled in 2013 after management agreed to pay $475,000 to workers who had complained about break policies. The company admitted no wrongdoing.
–Staff and wire reports