Like the other Republican candidates, Donald Trump bashes federal regulation of business. He’s called the Environmental Protection Agency “a disgrace,” saying it is “making it impossible” for companies to function. Yet it’s difficult to find any statements by Trump on another favorite regulatory whipping boy for conservatives: the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Trump’s silence on the subject is all the more significant given that in his business career he has had personal experience with workplace safety issues. Those dealings have not always put him in the best light.
The biggest controversy he has faced in this area involves the Trump SoHo New York. During construction of the high-rise hotel in January 2008, a portion of the top two floors buckled while concrete was being poured, sending one worker, Yurly Yanchytsky, plummeting 42 stories to his death and injuring three others, one of whom survived only because he fell into protective netting (photo).
All of the workers were employees of DiFama Concrete, a subcontractor which was charged by OSHA with various violations of regulations relating to cast-in-place concrete and fall protection. The agency initially imposed 10 violations with total penalties of $104,000. The company negotiated those down to five violations and penalties of $44,000.
This was not the first blemish on DiFama’s safety record. According to the OSHA inspection database, during the previous four years the company had been cited by OSHA for about a dozen serious violations and initially penalized $97,000 (negotiated down to about $67,000). One of those cases also involved a fatality. DiFama, by the way, was founded by Joseph Fama, who had been identified as an associate of the Lucchese organized crime family. In 2005 he divested his interest in the firm because he was being imprisoned after pleading guilty to federal racketeering and extortion charges.
Trump initially distanced himself from the accident, saying that he had simply licensed his name to the project. Yet the New York Daily News reported last year that a top official at Bovis Lend Lease, the general contractor for the project, stated in a deposition that Trump had personally reviewed the agreements with the subcontractors, including the one with DiFama. The Trump SoHo is currently listed on the Trump Organization website as part of its real estate portfolio and its hotel collection.
The SoHo hotel is not the only Trump-related property to have had problems with workplace safety. The OSHA inspection database lists other violations at places such as the Trump International Hotel & Tower Las Vegas. Undoubtedly, there are many more listed under the names of the contractors and subcontractors hired on the various projects. Inspection records from the 1980s show numerous violations at the Atlantic City casinos Trump owned at the time but subsequently had to sell.
Trump has boasted that he would be “the greatest jobs president that God has ever created.” It remains unclear how important it is to him that those jobs be free from undue safety and health risks.