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Trump’s Labor Pick, Andrew Puzder, Is Critic of Minimum Wage Increases Trump’s Labor Pick, Andrew Puzder, Is Critic of Minimum Wage Increases
(about 4 hours later)
President-elect Donald J. Trump on Thursday named Andrew F. Puzder, chief executive of the company that operates the fast food outlets Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. and an outspoken critic of the worker protections enacted by the Obama administration, to be secretary of labor. President-elect Donald J. Trump on Thursday chose Andrew F. Puzder, chief executive of the company that franchises the fast-food outlets Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. and an outspoken critic of the worker protections enacted by the Obama administration, to be secretary of labor.
Mr. Puzder has spent his career in the private sector and has opposed efforts to expand eligibility for overtime pay, while arguing that large minimum wage increases hurt small businesses and lead to job loss among low-skilled workers. “Andy Puzder has created and boosted the careers of thousands of Americans, and his extensive record fighting for workers makes him the ideal candidate to lead the Department of Labor,” Mr. Trump said in a statement.
He strongly supports repealing the Affordable Care Act, which he maintains has helped create a “restaurant recession” because rising premiums have left middle- and working-class people with less money to spend dining out. Mr. Puzder, 66, fits the profile of some of Mr. Trump’s other domestic cabinet appointments. He is a wealthy businessman and political donor and has a long record of promoting a conservative agenda that takes aim at President Obama’s legacy. And more than the other appointments, he resembles Mr. Trump in style.
Mr. Puzder will arguably have less experience in government than any labor secretary since the early 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan appointed a longtime construction executive named Raymond J. Donovan. Mr. Donovan’s tenure was marked by an easing of numerous regulations. Mr. Puzder seems to delight in bashing elites — he complained that “big corporate interests” and “globalist companies” were supporting Hillary Clinton in the presidential election — and is prone to the occasional streak of political incorrectness.
In selecting Mr. Puzder, Mr. Trump appears to be banking on the idea that he can replicate some of his own appeal. Mr. Puzder, too, is a successful businessman prone to making populist pronouncements — he complained that “big corporate interests” and “globalist companies” were supporting Hillary Clinton in the presidential election — and the occasional streak of political incorrectness. On policy questions, he has argued that the Obama administration’s recent rule expanding eligibility for overtime pay diminishes opportunities for workers and that significant minimum wage increases would hurt small businesses and lead to job losses.
The advertisements that Mr. Puzder’s companies runs to promote its restaurants frequently feature women wearing next to nothing while gesturing suggestively. “I like our ads,” he told the publication Entrepreneur. “I like beautiful women eating burgers in bikinis. I think it’s very American.” He has criticized paid sick leave policies of the sort recently enacted for federal contractors and strongly supports repealing the Affordable Care Act, which he says has created a “government-mandated restaurant recession” because rising premiums have left people with less money to spend dining out.
But Mr. Trump is also taking a risk that a wealthy chief executive will be viewed as a credible advocate for workers. Speaking to Business Insider this year, Mr. Puzder said that increased automation could be a welcome development because machines were “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.”
In a 2012 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Puzder’s company listed his base salary as over $1 million. “Annual base salaries should be competitive and create a measure of financial security for our executive officers,” the filing said. And on the political incorrectness front, Mr. Puzder’s company, CKE Restaurants, runs advertisements that frequently feature women wearing next to nothing while gesturing suggestively. “I like our ads,” he told the publication Entrepreneur. “I like beautiful women eating burgers in bikinis. I think it’s very American.”
Many advocates of raising the minimum wage significantly argue that it is necessary to provide a measure of financial security to ordinary workers. Richard L. Trumka, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said Mr. Puzder was “a man whose business record is defined by fighting against working people.”
As labor secretary, Mr. Puzder would oversee the federal apparatus that investigates violations of minimum wage, overtime and worker safety laws and regulations. According to a Labor Department database, many Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. stores have been investigated over the past 15 years, and some fined or ordered to pay back wages, though most of those cases appear to have been at stores owned and operated by franchisees, not CKE itself. Such investigations are relatively common in the fast-food industry.
Matthew Haller, senior vice president for public affairs and communications at the International Franchise Association, of which Mr. Puzder is a board member, said Mr. Puzder would see “a role for government to provide advice to employers, rather than simply deterrence by ‘gotcha’ enforcement,” an allusion to the Obama Labor Department’s enforcement of laws and regulations in the fast-food industry.
Mr. Haller and other allies of Mr. Puzder say that those who take the time to look beyond his most provocative statements will find the wisdom of a man who has toiled on labor issues for years.
“His position on the minimum wage is more nuanced than people want to give him credit for,” Mr. Haller said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s middle ground” on the overtime rule, he added. “He’s a business person, a deal maker.”
There is some evidence to support that view. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed article after his comments on automation, Mr. Puzder argued that humans remained important “to assure smooth experiences” for customers.
In an appearance on Fox Business in May, he said that he was “not opposed to raising the minimum wage rationally; I’m opposed to raising it to the point where lower-skilled workers, working-class Americans, young people, minorities, are losing the jobs they need to get on the ladder of success.”
Though he did not explain what a “rational” minimum wage increase would entail, he opposed the Obama administration’s efforts to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 from $7.25, where it has stood since 2009. That is far below the $15 per hour that many advocates have called for and that a variety of cities and states have enacted in recent years, albeit on a phased-in timetable.
Economic research suggests that an increase to the vicinity of $10.10 per hour would have little or no effect on employment in much of the country, though the effects could be larger in low-wage, low-cost areas. Mr. Puzder has raised concerns about the effects in those areas.
On other issues, Mr. Puzder has taken hard-line positions that leave less room for negotiation. Perhaps most prominent is the so-called joint employer doctrine that the Obama administration and its agency appointees have put forth in recent years.
Under that doctrine, large companies that have franchises or hire other companies as contractors are more likely to be held liable for violations of employment laws by those contractors or franchisees. The parent companies typically argue that they have no legal responsibility in these cases.
Mr. Puzder has been unambiguous in his disdain for the new standard. As labor secretary, there are certain steps he could take to immediately undo it, though there are some applications, like to the law governing unions, that would require action by the National Labor Relations Board or federal courts.
Perhaps the biggest question surrounding Mr. Puzder is how he would be perceived as a wealthy chief executive charged with looking out for workers’ interests.
According to a 2012 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Puzder’s base salary was over $1 million and his total compensation over $4 million, down from more than $10 million the year before. “Annual base salaries should be competitive and create a measure of financial security for our executive officers,” the filing said.
In the 2016 election cycle, Mr. Puzder and his wife gave more than $300,000 to Mr. Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee. But for all his populist rhetoric, his previous political contributions — as well as his positions on most business issues and regulations, and his reading habits — suggest he is more of an orthodox Republican than Mr. Trump.
Before backing Mr. Trump, he donated to the campaigns of Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina, Rick Perry, Scott Walker and Jeb Bush, and helped shape Mitt Romney’s economic plan in 2011. And when asked to provide some insight into what Mr. Puzder was like away from the job, Mr. Haller said he was an avid reader who loved Ayn Rand, the libertarian novelist.
According to a 1989 article in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Mr. Puzder helped draft a Missouri law banning most abortions at public facilities and requiring doctors to test the viability of fetuses starting at 20 weeks. But according to another Post-Dispatch article, he offered to resign from a task force, convened by Gov. John Ashcroft of Missouri to study a Supreme Court decision upholding the law, after his ex-wife accused him of domestic violence.
Mr. Puzder, who declined to comment for this article, eventually did resign from the task force but denied the allegations. The Trump transition team forwarded a recent letter from his ex-wife declaring that she had been “counseled then to file an allegation of abuse.” She added, “I regretted and still regret that decision, and I withdrew those allegations.”
“You were not abusive,” she added.