Hurting Working People

Andrew Puzder has spent his career standing in the way of working people. The millionaire CEO opposed minimum wage and overtime pay increases. He has attacked rules requiring that working people receive paid sick and family leave to take care of their families. He has complained about having to provide legally-required rest and meal breaks to employees. The Labor Department—the same agency Trump has tapped Puzder to run—found the restaurants he oversees guilty of stealing employee wages in 60 percent of their investigations. Puzder’s CKE Restaurants routinely failed to fairly compensate the people who worked at his restaurants with overtime pay. Also, Puzder laid off and gutted retirement plans for middle-class employees, even as he continued to enjoy major corporate perks, including personal use of the company plane.

Articles | Hurting Working People

An anti-labor labor secretary won’t do

January 17, 2017 3:52 pm

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette • Barney Oursler

Our region was built on the blood, sweat and tears of workers in the steel mills and coal mines. The rights of working-class people across the nation were fought for and won by those workers. Pittsburgh is central to the labor movement, to standing up for the working class and to fighting for families.

Tens of thousands of people who voted for Donald Trump in this region did so because they heard his promises of better jobs and and a better life. However, after President-elect Trump’s nomination of fast-food CEO Andrew Puzder to be the nation’s secretary of labor, we see just how false those promises were. Mr. Puzder is vehemently opposed to the rights of workers trying to support their families. He is the antithesis of a labor secretary.

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Blog Posts | Hurting Working People

CARL’S JR. WORKERS DETAIL MISTREATMENT AT PUZDER’S RESTAURANTS

January 17, 2017 3:40 pm

National Employment Law Project • Rachel Nass

In her testimony at a January 10^th forum featuring fast-food workers mistreated by the Carl’s Jr. restaurant chain headed by labor secretary nominee Andrew Puzder, NELP Executive Director Christine Owens once again outlined the extreme contradiction of the president-elect’s pick for labor secretary.

WATCH the forum on YouTube.

As Owens explained, Congress established the Department of Labor more than 100 years ago in order to separate the competing interests of commerce and labor in the federal government, which were originally housed in a single cabinet agency.

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Articles | Hurting Working People

My View: Trump’s big mistake at the Department of Labor

January 17, 2017 3:31 pm

Rockford Register Star • Michael Oswalt

Sometime in the next few weeks, the Senate will take up Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of labor, Andrew Puzder. While Trump has gotten a lot of attention for tough talk about protecting American workers through renegotiated trade deals and punishing companies that outsource jobs, picking Puzder proves Trump’s takes are nothing more than smoke and tweets.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s purpose is “to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of wage earners of the United States, to improve their working conditions, and to advance their opportunities for profitable employment.” Yet as CEO of the company that controls fast food restaurants Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, Puzder has shown disdain for working people, and his record suggests that confirming him would be like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.

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Blog Posts | Hurting Working People

Fast Food Workers Denounce Trump’s Labor Nominee as the #AntiLaborSecretary

January 17, 2017 3:04 pm

Demos • Amy Traub

“I was the victim of wage theft, exploitation, and of a stolen paycheck. I was never paid for time I regularly worked before clocking in. Every time I spoke up about the problem I was retaliated against by having my hours cut and my shifts changed.”

Those were the powerful words of long-time Carl’s Jr. employee Roberto Ramirez as he spoke in Spanish before a Senate forum this week. The treatment Ramirez tearfully described was illegal, exactly the type of abuse working people depend on the U.S. Department of Labor to investigate and remedy. But the man ultimately responsible for working conditions at Carl’s Jr. – the chief executive who built his personal fortune on the mistreatment of workers like Mr. Ramirez – is now Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Labor, charged with enforcing these very laws.

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Shareables | Hurting Working People

Working People Reject Andrew Puzder

January 13, 2017 4:03 am

https://www.facebook.com/Fightfor15/videos/1404313792932667/

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Articles | Hurting Working People // Lining His Own Pockets

These Hardee’s Workers Wound Up With Less Than Minimum Wage Under Trump’s Labor Pick

January 12, 2017 5:53 pm

The Huffington Post • Dave Jamieson

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Andy Puzder, the CEO of the Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. burger chains, to be America’s next labor secretary. In doing so, Trump may be drawing more attention to the plight of low-wage workers than he could have imagined.

Puzder’s company violated minimum wage law by paying Hardee’s workers with pre-paid Visa debit cards, according to a 2014 investigation by the Labor Department obtained by the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank. Workers incurred fees on those cards whenever they used ATMs outside of the designated network to redeem their pay.

The workers’ pay rates were so low that the fees pushed their overall pay below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, investigators found.

The agency ordered Hardee’s to pay a sum of $2,071.98 to an undisclosed number of workers based in Alabama. Records dated August 2014 indicate that Hardee’s refused to do so, on the grounds that complying with the order would require them to change their companywide payroll system.