The Hill • Deborah Berokwitz

Twenty-year old Regina Elsea was employed as a temporary worker in an auto parts plant in Alabama. When she wasn’t working, she was planning her wedding for the summer of 2016. But just two weeks before the big day, her plans came to a horrific end while she was at work. The plant assembly line stopped, and she and three coworkers entered a robotic station to clear a sensor fault. While she was inside the machine, the robot restarted abruptly, crushing her to death.

An investigation by the government’s workplace safety agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), found that her tragic death could have been prevented had Regina’s employers followed basic safety precautions. Her employers had never implemented the basic safety procedures, around for decades, to prevent machines from starting up when workers are inside. This is one of the oldest and most basic of all safety rules. In December, OSHA levied more than $2.5 million in fines against the company.

As the Senate gets ready to consider the President Trump’s nomination of Andrew Puzder for U.S. secretary of Labor, it’s important that worker safety issues get the full attention they deserve during his confirmation hearings. Puzder is an outspoken critic of regulations who fails to acknowledge the crucial role that regulations play in saving lives, protecting workers’ health, and even saving businesses money through lower insurance costs, for example. In more than 50 percent of the OSHA investigations in CKE restaurants and franchises since 2000, OSHA has found violations.

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The Nation • Spencer Woodman

On February 2, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee will hold confirmation hearings for Andrew Puzder, Donald Trump’s choice to head the Department of Labor. Puzder is the CEO of CKE Restaurants, which owns Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s fast food restaurants and employs thousands of workers across the country. Throughout his career, he has been an outspoken critic of labor regulations and government programs that provide services to the poor. But lately, Puzder has also backed lobbying tactics that extended beyond politics as usual: until recently, the multi-millionaire CEO belonged to the Job Creators Network, or JCN, a group that helps corporations push anti-regulation messages on employees at work in order to influence their voting preferences, a practice the organization calls “Employer to Employee” (E2E) policy education.

Job Creators Network boasts that the group’s political messaging has the ability to reach more than 60 million employees across the country. In training materials, JCN encourages employers to send their workers a steady stream of emails and letters about policies that affect businesses, as well as to place posters and fliers around the workplace and to stuff paycheck envelopes with political material. The group also advises employers to expose workers to political messaging during break hours and to hold town-hall-style meetings or screen policy videos.

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CNN • Andrew Kaczynski

In two speeches in 2011, Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of labor, fast-food executive Andrew Puzder, described the employees hired at his restaurants as the “best of the worst” available in the employment pool.

Puzder, who is the CEO of CKE Restaurants, the company that operates the fast-food chains Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., is scheduled to appear before a Senate committee on Feb. 2 for his confirmation hearing. Puzder has drawn criticism from Democrats and organized labor for his opposition to several of their key policy priorities, including a $15 federal minimum wage and the Labor department’s overtime rule.

Speaking to a students of Westmont College in February 2011, Puzder discussed the changes he made at CKE when he initially took over as its chief executive.

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Vice • Alex Swerdloff

Of all the nominees for cabinet positions in Donald Trump’s White House, the one that may have the most direct and immediate impact on restaurant and food industry workers is Andy Puzder, the current pick for United States Secretary of Labor.

Although CNN recently reported that the polarizing fast-food executive—currently the CEO of CKE restaurants, the parent company of Carl’s Jr., Hardee’s, and the Green Burrito and Red Burrito brands—may be having “second thoughts” about the appointment, Puzder tweeted that he is looking forward to his confirmation hearing, which will likely take place next month.

Regardless of who is ultimately confirmed for the position, the next labor secretary’s policies could greatly affect roughly 14.4 million American restaurant workers, nearly four million of whom work in the fast food sector. Puzder’s nomination, however, has many food policy and labor experts deeply worried. They say his history of opposing minimum wage, overtime, and other pro-worker regulations portends a new era of strife for low-income workers—and may even lead to the replacement of workers who speak out… with machines.

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Newsweek • Robin Urevich

Last month, when President-elect Donald Trump named fast-food CEO Andrew Puzder to head the U.S. Department of Labor, many observers were left scratching their heads. Some questioned whether a man who’d argued strongly against government regulation could become the chief enforcer of some of the same overtime and paid sick day laws he’d publicly opposed. Less than a year ago, Puzder said he favored replacing some employees with robots, in part because robots don’t file age, sex or race discrimination lawsuits.

Puzder, who heads CKE Restaurants, the parent company of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s burger joints, along with Red Burrito and Green Burrito shops, has also loudly proclaimed his opposition to Obamacare, as well as his enthusiasm for using sex to sell fast food. Carl’s Jr. ads routinely feature bikini-clad models lustfully gobbling thousand-calorie burgers. “We believe in putting hot models in our commercials, because ugly ones don’t sell burgers,” reads a 2011 company press release.

What is less well known is the company’s contentious record on civil rights. As Puzder, who is an attorney, may have inadvertently suggested in touting robots to replace workers, the company has a problem with racial discrimination and sexual harassment.

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Morning Consult • Alex Rowell

President Donald Trump promised during the campaign that his administration would protect and fight for the American worker. However, talk is cheap, and Trump’s actions — past and present — make it clear that his real priorities lie elsewhere. Trump’s business past is filled with allegations of stiffing contractors and union-busting. And when tasked with choosing a leader to fulfill the U.S. Department of Labor’s mission to “foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners of the United States,” Trump nominated fast food CEO Andrew Puzder — someone who is squarely on the side of big business.

Puzder’s fierce opposition to pro-worker policies and his company’s record of underpaying and mistreating workers contradicts the mandate of the Labor Department, long a bulwark for worker rights and protections.

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