"While Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. employees have worked for
poverty-level wages, Puzder himself has thrived. His salary is
estimated at over $4 million yearly. His total earnings,
however, appear to be much higher. In 2010, he reportedly
owned about $25.6 million worth of CKE Restaurants
shares. That was the last year that CKE Restaurants was a
public company, and the last year that Puzder’s
compensation was reported publicly. That same year, he
facilitated the sale of CKE to Apollo Equities."
Trump chooses millionaire fast food executive as secretary of labor
9 December 2016
Trump chooses
millionaire fast food executive as secretary of labor
By Shelley Connor
9 December 2016
9 December 2016
Donald Trump has
nominated Andrew Puzder, millionaire CEO of CKE Restaurants, as Secretary of
Labor. Puzder, who runs the Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. chains, is a well-known
opponent of minimum wage increases and of mandatory overtime pay for salaried
employees. As Secretary of Labor, Puzder will be positioned to advance policies
on minimum wages, wage equality, unemployment benefits and occupational safety.
Puzder has been a particularly vocal critic of raising the minimum
wage, stating that doing so would merely provide an incentive for restaurant
owners to automate service. At the same time, he has stated in multiple
interviews with business publications that he supports fully automating
restaurants. In an interview with Business Insider in March of
this year, he stated, “I want to try it. We could have a restaurant that’s
focused on all-natural products... where you order on a kiosk, you pay with a
credit or debit card, your order pops up, and you never see a person.”
He also opposes
guaranteeing overtime for poorly-paid salaried employees, such as the men and
women who manage his restaurants. Puzder’s industry relies heavily on workers
making poverty-level wages. Line cooks, cashiers and shift managers at a
Hardee’s restaurant typically make between $7.74—just above minimum wage—and
$9.00 an hour. Restaurant managers, who work more than 50 hours weekly, earn
about $36,000 yearly.
Puzder claims that
mandating overtime for managers will lead to hours and bonuses being cut. “Most
salaried employees recognize that in exchange for the opportunity, prestige and
financial benefits that come with a salaried position and a performance-based
bonus, they’re expected to have an increased sense of ownership and stay until
the job gets done, to run the business like they own it,” he wrote in a March
2016 op-ed in Forbes.
While Hardee’s and
Carl’s Jr. employees have worked for poverty-level wages, Puzder himself has
thrived. His salary is estimated at over $4 million yearly. His total earnings,
however, appear to be much higher. In 2010, he reportedly owned about $25.6
million worth of CKE Restaurants shares. That was the last year that CKE
Restaurants was a public company, and the last year that Puzder’s compensation
was reported publicly. That same year, he facilitated the sale of CKE to Apollo
Equities.
Speaking to the OC
Register in 2014, Puzder also complained that California law was too strict
about rest and meal breaks for employees. Along with California’s overtime laws
and minimum wage, he cited these requirements as a reason to halt expansion of
CKE Restaurants in the state.
Trump’s nomination of
Puzder has been criticized by trade union leaders, who had largely supported
Clinton. The nomination also comes in the midst of an ongoing battle between
the president-elect and United Steelworkers Local 1999 President Chuck Jones.
Jones has stated that Trump “lied his ass off” and misrepresented the number of
jobs that would be saved by Trump’s intervention in the Carrier’s decision to
move production to Mexico. Trump fired back via Twitter that Jones had done “a
terrible job representing workers.”
The posturing of the
unions, however, is completely hypocritical. During the elections, they
generally supported Clinton, the candidate of Wall Street who pledged to
continue the policies of the Obama administration—which has overseen the
largest transfer of wealth to the rich in US history. The unions have long
promoted the nationalist poison that Trump sold during the elections. Following
Trump’s victory, they pledged to “work with” the president-elect to implement
his nationalist economic policy.
Puzder’s nomination
is of a piece with Trump’s other cabinet choices. Betsy DeVos, an enemy of
public education, has been selected to head the Department of Education. Ben
Carson, the neurosurgeon known for his antipathy towards government
“interference” in housing regulation, has been nominated as the Housing and
Urban Development Secretary.
Steve Mnuchin, a
former Goldman-Sachs executive responsible for a pandemic of foreclosures, has
been tapped as Secretary of the Treasury. And Representative Tom Price, a
proponent of massive cuts in health care, has been selected to head the
Department of Health and Human Services.
So far, the Trump
cabinet has a combined net worth of over $14 billion. Their wealth and their
policies place them in direct conflict with the interests of the American
working class. The selection of Puzder confirms the social counter-revolution
that the new administration is preparing to implement.
At the same time,
Trump is continuing and deepening the policies of the Obama administration.
Obama allowed Wall Street to choose key members of his cabinet. He supported
bank bailouts while leaving workers to contend with underwater mortgages and
foreclosures. He spearheaded the assault on wages through the bankruptcy of the
auto companies, and his principal domestic initiative—the Affordable Care
Act—served to shift costs of health care from corporations and the state onto
individuals.
ANDREW PUZDER:
ANDREW PUZDER:
ENEMY OF THE AMERICAN WORKER and ADVOCATE FOR OPEN BORDERS
TRUMP'S OPEN BORDERS
AND AMNESTY/ NON-ENFORCEMENT POLICIES WILL HELP KEEP THE HAMBURGER INDUSTRY
WELL STOCKED WITH "CHEAP" LABOR ILLEGALS.... The America people will
then be forced to pay the REAL cost of all that staggeringly expensive labor
“Yet Andrew Puzder, the
chief executive of the company that operates Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, has been chosen by President-elect Donald
Trump as labor secretary.”
“Mr. Puzder, however, has been adamantly
opposed to a meaningful increase in the federal minimum wage, which is $7.25 an
hour. Mr. Trump has said he could stomach an increase to $10, which is still
abysmal.”
“Here is the record at
those restaurants. When the Obama Labor Department looked at thousands of
complaints involving fast-food workers, it found labor law violations in 60
percent of the investigations at Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, usually for failure
to pay the minimum wage or time and a half for overtime.”
HOW MANY HAMBURGER JOINTS HIRE legals????
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