POSTED BY MARTIN KICH
Here are excerpts from two articles for Huffington Post on Andy Puzder, President Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of Labor.
The first excerpt is from Ryan Grim’s nightly newsletter:
When I was in high school and working in the Washington College dining hall kitchen, where I swear it was 120 degrees, I vividly remember my boss telling me one day she didn’t think I was pulling my weight. My weight, I remember thinking, is $4.35/hr, and I’m pretty sure I’m pulling at least that. In today’s economy, the people who don’t pull their weight are the ones squeezing every penny out of the paycheck of a worker and, if they can pull it off, pitting those workers against their line managers and making them fight each other for scraps.
That’s essentially the business model of Hardee’s, the fast-food joint run by Labor Secretary nominee Andy Puzder. The restaurants were found by the Labor Dept to be breaking the law again and again and again. And now Trump wants Puzder to run the Labor Dept.
The second excerpt is from an article by Dave Jamieson:
–Managers at a Hardee’s restaurant in Alabama scrubbed workers’ hours from the logbooks in order to avoid paying them overtime.
–Hardee’s workers in Pennsylvania were required to pay 10 cents per hour for the privilege of wearing a Hardee’s uniform.
–Workers at a Georgia Hardee’s were told to clock out and sit in the parking lot when business slowed down. When it picked up again, they were told to clock back in and work.
–Managers at a Hardee’s in Missouri had money deducted from their paychecks whenever the cash register came up short.
–Adult workers at a Hardee’s restaurant in Iowa were paid a “sub-minimum wage” that was legal only for minors, while minors worked so late that their hours broke child labor law.
In each of those cases, Labor Department investigators found that Hardee’s restaurants had violated federal wage-and-hour regulations and workers were entitled to thousands of dollars in backpay. Throughout this time, the Hardee’s brand has been overseen by Andrew Puzder, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the next labor secretary.
If he is confirmed by the Senate, Puzder would be responsible for enforcing the same worker protections that his company and its franchisees were caught violating, sometimes repeatedly.
Puzder’s nomination to head the Labor Department has galvanized Democrats and workplace watchdogs, who say his record at Hardee’s and his past statements about workers should disqualify him from the job.
Jamieson’s complete article is available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/andy-puzder-hardees-labor-law-violations_us_5893b7ade4b09bd304ba7f14.
