Excellent article:
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/labor/315388-5-reasons-the-senate-must-reject-andrew-puzder-as-labor-secretary1. Puzder's corporation, CKE Restaurants, is a persistent labor law violator.
The fast-food sector is rife with unlawful behavior and CKE is one of the worst offenders. According to a major study by the Department of Labor, 60 percent of CKE restaurants had at least one Fair Labor Standards Act violation. The fourth-worst offender in an industry rife with bad actors, CKE has faced several class-action lawsuits on wage theft.
Puzder simply cannot be trusted to enforce a law his own Carl's Jr. and Hardee's restaurants habitually violate.
2. By all accounts, Puzder cares little for his own employees.
Earlier this month, CKE announced layoffs when it relocated its corporate headquarters from California and St. Louis to Nashville, Tennessee. According to one former management employee, keeping employees informed was a low priority. As a former CKE director told Bloomberg BNA, "his choice was always: 'they don’t need to know; they just need to know where to show up to work.'"
Puzder's former director of franchise development stated that Puzder did not prioritize employees' welfare because his primary responsibility was "to the shareholders and to the franchisees to be able to deliver profits." "Shareholders and profits first, workers last" is not a good motto for the new secretary of Labor.
3. Puzder apparently believes that workers in his industry should be replaced by machines because machines "always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex or race discrimination case," as he told Business Insider in March 2016.
Andrew Puzder, job destroyer and champion of automation: So much for the Trump administration's supposed focus on job creation.
4. All indications suggest that Puzder would benefit powerful corporations at the expense of American workers.
He opposes an overtime rule that would raise wages for millions of American workers. Employees at Puzder's restaurants report being pressured to work "off the clock" as they approach 40 hours in order to avoid overtime payments. Puzder, who pulls in a multimillion dollar salary, opposes increasing the federal minimum wage and his restaurants pay poverty-level wages.
We do not need a Labor secretary from the 0.01 percent who believes that $7.25 per hour is an acceptable living wage.
5. Puzder opposes holding fast-food and other corporations responsible for the unlawful behavior of their franchisees.
Since Puzder was nominated, workers from Carl's Jr. and Hardee's have come forward in droves with stories of mistreatment, including sexual harassment, and many say management failed to act on their complaints. Puzder doesn't know or doesn't care about the appalling record of his CKE restaurants.
