Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of Labor, Andy Puzder — therobot-loving CEOof Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s parent company, CKE Restaurants —is notoriously anti-labor. He’s advocated for replacing people with machines instead of paying them a livable wage, thinks Obamacare is bogus, and presided over chains withremarkably high sexual-harassment rates. (Carl’s Jr. has also produced aseries of sexist burger ads.) His own workers at Carl’s Jr. have been revolting against him byprotesting his nomination, with a 20-year employee of CKEcallinghim “not the person to protect American workers’ rights.”
Today, CNN Money revealed moreevidenceof his animosity toward workers. In a speech given at Westmont College in February 2011, CNN’s KFile reports, Puzder described fast-food workers as “the best of the worst” and “kind of the bottom of the pool.” Continuing, he said that “at Hardee’s it was so bad, we were hiring the worst of the worst.” Later that year at California State University, Puzder drove this point home again, saying fast-food companies “compete for the best of the worst.” In that same speech, he did admit that “nobody wanted to work at Hardee’s,” though it’s not clear that he’s thought about why that might be the case.
