Andy Puzder Would Be a Threat to Women
On Thursday, the Senate is scheduled to hold a hearing for President Donald Trump’s labor secretary nominee, Andy Puzder.
Puzder - who would be the official charged with promoting the welfare and rights of workers, including a women’s bureau - has made clear not only his opposition to workers’ rights, but his contempt for women. As the CEO of CKE Restaurants, the group owning Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, Andy Puzder has been famous for some of the most tawdry and objectifying commercials ever made, mostly featuring actresses seductively eating burgers in bikinis (what Puzder says is a “take on my personality”). In a public statement, he helpfully elaborated, “We believe in putting hot models in our commercials, because ugly ones don’t sell burgers.” Puzder often makes suggestive references to his target market of “young, hungry guys.”
And those are just some of the things he says. It gets more troubling when you look at the things he actually does. Women make up two-thirds of the fast-food workforce, where they often make minimum wage and face sexual harassment. But in Puzder’s companies, the situation is even worse: 66 percent of female CKE workers surveyed reported sexual harassment on the job, in comparison with 40 percent in the fast-food industry more broadly. Many fast-food workers are mothers raising families - and many of them are forced to rely on food stamps to feed their children because their wages are so insufficient. CKE has faced class-action lawsuits for underpaying and denying overtime to workers. In fact, since Puzder became CEO of CKE, according to one investigation, “Carl’s Jr. and Hardees have been sued for employment discrimination under federal law more than any other major burger chain.” There are numerous stories of workers in these restaurants facing harassment, mistreatment, and poverty wages. And while Puzder’s companies have made revenue of over a billion dollars, he has spoken out against fair overtime pay, paid sick days, and opposed even a $10.10 minimum wage. In fact, his response to a rising minimum wage is to get rid of some workers altogether and instead employ robots because “they are always polite, they 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.”
And this is the man who would be entrusted with protecting women workers from pregnancy discrimination, defending breastfeeding rights, and fighting the gender wage gap?
In addition to his record in the private sector, Puzder has a deeply troubling history with women’s reproductive rights. Puzder was the “architect” of a state law created to dismantle Roe v. Wade, and he has taken on the work like a personal vendetta, writing legislation to establish the various rights of embryos and defending anti-choice activists who have trespassed and harassed patients at clinics. It’s also come out now that for years he never paid taxes on a housekeeper’s wages.
There’s a thread throughout all of this: utter disregard for the rights of women. While women’s work may not always be protected or valued, or even seen, it holds our economy - our families, our communities - together. Whether we’re talking about microbusiness, or the leadership of hedge funds, or women's unremunerated care work and labor in the home, women’s contributions consistently improve the bottom line. Seventy-two million women are in the formal labor force in our country. And women are increasingly the breadwinners for American families.
Andy Puzder’s confirmation as labor secretary would not just be an affront to women everywhere; it would be a direct hit on our economy and on the thin safety net we have for workers in our country. Like all of Trump’s nominees, it’s nearly laughable how at odds Puzder is with the mission of the agency he would be leading. But this isn’t funny anymore.
Dawn Huckelbridge is the senior adviser on policy and YEO state strategies at People for the American Way.
Follow Dawn on Twitter.
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