SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
#NotOurLaborSec: Fast Food Workers Protest Puzder at Corporate Offices and Chains Nationwide
As protests against Andy Puzder erupt around the country, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tells labor secretary nominee he has a "sneering contempt" for workers
Feb 13, 2017
For the third time since anti-worker fast food CEO Andy Puzder's nomination for Labor Secretary was announced, fast food workers are flooding the streets in protest.
| Tweets about #AndyPuzder OR #NotOurLaborSec OR #fightfor15 |
Days before Puzder's confirmation hearing on Thursday, hundreds of cashiers and cooks are rallying in front of the St. Louis headquarters of Hardee's and the Anaheim, Calif. offices of CKE Restaurants, the conglomerate overseen by Puzder that includes Carl's Jr. and Hardee's restaurants.
Fast food workers aren't the only people objecting to Puzder's nomination. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent a blistering letter (pdf) to Puzder Monday in which she charged him with "a sneering contempt for the workers in your stores and a vehement opposition to the laws you will be charged with enforcing."
Indeed, workers say that wage theft, discrimination, and sexual harassment are rampant at Puzder's chains. Those allegations are backed up by publicly available data and have also prompted multiple investigations from the Department of Labor, as media reports have noted.
"Andy Puzder is unfit to be Labor Secretary--period," said Angel Gallegos, a Carl's Jr. cashier from Los Angeles, Calif. "We're stepping up our fight to demand that Puzder withdraw his nomination, and if he won't, then the U.S. Senate should reject him. Working families need a real labor secretary who will fight for ordinary people, not powerful corporations."
One former Carl's Jr. employee spoke out Monday on Democracy Now! about being ignored when she reported sexual harassment while working for Puzder's chain:
Puzder has also recently come under fire for hiring an undocumented immigrant as a housekeeper and avoiding taxes on her labor, as Common Dreams reported.
In fact, the battle over Puzder is heating up, The Hill reports, with Democrats seeing his nomination as on even shakier ground than that of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, whose confirmation required a tie-breaking vote from the vice president for the first time in U.S. history.
" Donald Trump ran on the promise of putting workers first, and what he's done in nominating Puzder, is show he never intended to keep that promise," a Senate Democratic aide commented to The Hill. "For a lot of voters, that's not what they had in mind when they entrusted Trump with their futures."
Watch the rally at Carl's Jr. headquarters here:
And follow the protests nationwide on social media, under the hashtags #NotOurLaborSec and #Fightfor15.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
For the third time since anti-worker fast food CEO Andy Puzder's nomination for Labor Secretary was announced, fast food workers are flooding the streets in protest.
| Tweets about #AndyPuzder OR #NotOurLaborSec OR #fightfor15 |
Days before Puzder's confirmation hearing on Thursday, hundreds of cashiers and cooks are rallying in front of the St. Louis headquarters of Hardee's and the Anaheim, Calif. offices of CKE Restaurants, the conglomerate overseen by Puzder that includes Carl's Jr. and Hardee's restaurants.
Fast food workers aren't the only people objecting to Puzder's nomination. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent a blistering letter (pdf) to Puzder Monday in which she charged him with "a sneering contempt for the workers in your stores and a vehement opposition to the laws you will be charged with enforcing."
Indeed, workers say that wage theft, discrimination, and sexual harassment are rampant at Puzder's chains. Those allegations are backed up by publicly available data and have also prompted multiple investigations from the Department of Labor, as media reports have noted.
"Andy Puzder is unfit to be Labor Secretary--period," said Angel Gallegos, a Carl's Jr. cashier from Los Angeles, Calif. "We're stepping up our fight to demand that Puzder withdraw his nomination, and if he won't, then the U.S. Senate should reject him. Working families need a real labor secretary who will fight for ordinary people, not powerful corporations."
One former Carl's Jr. employee spoke out Monday on Democracy Now! about being ignored when she reported sexual harassment while working for Puzder's chain:
Puzder has also recently come under fire for hiring an undocumented immigrant as a housekeeper and avoiding taxes on her labor, as Common Dreams reported.
In fact, the battle over Puzder is heating up, The Hill reports, with Democrats seeing his nomination as on even shakier ground than that of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, whose confirmation required a tie-breaking vote from the vice president for the first time in U.S. history.
" Donald Trump ran on the promise of putting workers first, and what he's done in nominating Puzder, is show he never intended to keep that promise," a Senate Democratic aide commented to The Hill. "For a lot of voters, that's not what they had in mind when they entrusted Trump with their futures."
Watch the rally at Carl's Jr. headquarters here:
And follow the protests nationwide on social media, under the hashtags #NotOurLaborSec and #Fightfor15.
For the third time since anti-worker fast food CEO Andy Puzder's nomination for Labor Secretary was announced, fast food workers are flooding the streets in protest.
| Tweets about #AndyPuzder OR #NotOurLaborSec OR #fightfor15 |
Days before Puzder's confirmation hearing on Thursday, hundreds of cashiers and cooks are rallying in front of the St. Louis headquarters of Hardee's and the Anaheim, Calif. offices of CKE Restaurants, the conglomerate overseen by Puzder that includes Carl's Jr. and Hardee's restaurants.
Fast food workers aren't the only people objecting to Puzder's nomination. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent a blistering letter (pdf) to Puzder Monday in which she charged him with "a sneering contempt for the workers in your stores and a vehement opposition to the laws you will be charged with enforcing."
Indeed, workers say that wage theft, discrimination, and sexual harassment are rampant at Puzder's chains. Those allegations are backed up by publicly available data and have also prompted multiple investigations from the Department of Labor, as media reports have noted.
"Andy Puzder is unfit to be Labor Secretary--period," said Angel Gallegos, a Carl's Jr. cashier from Los Angeles, Calif. "We're stepping up our fight to demand that Puzder withdraw his nomination, and if he won't, then the U.S. Senate should reject him. Working families need a real labor secretary who will fight for ordinary people, not powerful corporations."
One former Carl's Jr. employee spoke out Monday on Democracy Now! about being ignored when she reported sexual harassment while working for Puzder's chain:
Puzder has also recently come under fire for hiring an undocumented immigrant as a housekeeper and avoiding taxes on her labor, as Common Dreams reported.
In fact, the battle over Puzder is heating up, The Hill reports, with Democrats seeing his nomination as on even shakier ground than that of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, whose confirmation required a tie-breaking vote from the vice president for the first time in U.S. history.
" Donald Trump ran on the promise of putting workers first, and what he's done in nominating Puzder, is show he never intended to keep that promise," a Senate Democratic aide commented to The Hill. "For a lot of voters, that's not what they had in mind when they entrusted Trump with their futures."
Watch the rally at Carl's Jr. headquarters here:
And follow the protests nationwide on social media, under the hashtags #NotOurLaborSec and #Fightfor15.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.