Thread: Trump's Labor Dept. Pick (Puzder) Admits to Employing Undocumented Worker

Trump's Labor Dept. pick admits to employing undocumented worker



Dan Merica February 6, 2017




Story highlights

• "When I learned of her status, we immediately ended her employment," Puzder said
• Puzder is the head of the parent company that owns fast food companies Hardee's and Carl's Jr.

(CNN)Andrew Puzder, President Donald Trump's pick to lead the Labor Department, employed an undocumented immigrant for years, the business magnate said in a statement Monday. It's an admission that in the past has sunk other Cabinet secretary nominees.

Puzder's nomination has been stalled in Congress after a series of delayed hearings from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Puzder, the head of the parent company that owns fast food companies Hardee's and Carl's Jr., said he and his wife have already paid back taxes on the employee.

"My wife and I employed a housekeeper for a few years, during which I was unaware that she was not legally permitted to work in the US," Puzder said in a statement. "When I learned of her status, we immediately ended her employment and offered her assistance in getting legal status."




Sources: Trump labor pick Andrew Puzder has voiced second thoughts about nomination


He added: "We have fully paid back taxes to the IRS and the state of California and submitted all required paperwork."
The Huffington Post first reported the fact Puzder employed an undocumented worker.

GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the HELP committee, said since Puzder "voluntarily corrected" his mistake, he doesn't find the revelation disqualifying.

"Based upon what I've learned, since Mr. Puzder reported his mistake and voluntarily corrected it, I do not believe that this should disqualify him from being a Cabinet secretary," he said in a statement.

A Republican source told CNN last month that Puzder had voiced second thoughts about his nomination because of a relentless barrage of criticism from Democrats, labor unions and other liberal groups.

"He may be bailing," a Republican source told CNN's John King. "He is not into the pounding he is taking, and the paperwork."
Puzder pushed back against these stories, tweeting, "I am looking forward to my hearing."


The Office of Government Ethics has also failed to post Puzder's ethics paperwork, meaning they have not approved how the businessman will untangle his considerable holdings.

Linda Chavez, George W. Bush's pick to be labor secretary, withdrew her nomination after it was discovered she allowed a Guatemalan woman who was in the United States illegally to live in her home and gave the woman spending money.

Zoe Baird, Bill Clinton's pick to be attorney general, was sunk by revelations that she hired undocumented help. The storyline became known as "Nannygate."

Wilbur Ross, Trump's pick to lead the the Commerce Department, also admitted last month the hired an undocumented household workers. Ross fired the household worker who deceived him about his or her immigration status and said that he paid all applicable taxes for the employee.


http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/06/politi...mented-worker/

Labor nominee Andy Puzder admits hiring undocumented housekeeper


By Eric Morath
Published: Feb 6, 2017 10:10 p.m. ET
Fast-food chain CEO says he was unaware, won’t step down


Bloomberg

Andy Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants.

President Donald Trump’s pick for labor secretary, fast-food executive Andy Puzder, said Monday that he previously employed an undocumented housekeeper. Puzder plans to continue to pursue confirmation for the cabinet position.

In a statement released Monday evening by a spokesman, Puzder said he employed a housekeeper “for a few years, during which I was unaware that she was not legally permitted to work in the U.S.”

“When I learned of her status, we immediately ended her employment and offered her assistance in getting legal status,” Puzder said.

“We have fully paid back taxes to the IRS and the State of California and submitted all required paperwork.” The information was earlier reported by the Huffington Post.

Puzder is chief executive of CKE Restaurants Holdings Inc., the parent company of the Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s burger chains.

An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.

Yeah, it's unfortunate, but we need to move on, get him confirmed, and get him to work stopping this activity all across our nation. He knows how to stop it and that's why he was picked by Trump. The restaurant industry is a high-turnover labor industry, he knows how they get hired, the tricks they use, the lies the workers tell, the networks that provide the workers, how they use all Hispanic crews to discriminate against white and black workers. He knows the whole rotten sicking mess, so he knows better than anyone how to fix it, and he will. He didn't leave his wonderful life to jump into the swamp to do anything but help Trump meet his goals of ending illegal immigration and creating jobs for Americans.

Like I've said several times before, this guy is an absolute horrible choice and should not be appointed as Secretary of Labor!!!

He has steadfastly supported more foreign labor and amnesty for illegal immigrants. Just as recent as last year he was pushing to amnesty illegal immigrants. I am firm in my believe that this guy just didn't wake up in November and have an epiphany that forced him to change the positions he's held on foreign labor and illegal immigrants for many years. We're smarter than this and know better!

On top of everything else, it now sounds like this guy is a liar. I'm not buying what he is selling. I just don't see how you have an illegal working for you for years and not know about it.

POLITICSLabor Nominee Andrew Puzder Has Another Problem: Undocumented Help

He did the right thing. And it could cost him.


02/06/2017 07:56 pm ET | Updated 2 hours ago

Ryan Grim Washington bureau chief for The Huffington Post

WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Department of Labor, Andrew Puzder, employed an undocumented immigrant as household help, Puzder has informed members of the administration and officials in the Senate involved in his confirmation process.

Hiring undocumented workers has sunk nominees in the past, particularly when it reflects directly on the scope of the Cabinet position. But Trump transition officials told Puzder that the previous rules for vetting and strict ethics no longer applied. “The view in the transition was that’s the old model,” said one GOP official involved with Puzder’s nomination.

Asked for comment, a White House official forwarded the request to a spokesman for Puzder, who provided a statement on his behalf:

“My wife and I employed a housekeeper for a few years, during which I was unaware that she was not legally permitted to work in the U.S. When I learned of her status, we immediately ended her employment and offered her assistance in getting legal status. We have fully paid back taxes to the IRS and the State of California and submitted all required paperwork.”

The woman, according to a separate source, declined the offer, fearful that it would lead to detainment and deportation.

Zoe Baird, President Bill Clinton’s first nominee to become attorney general, withdrew after it emerged she had hired an undocumented nanny, and her story became a cautionary tale for nominees going forward. (Clinton’s second nominee, Kimba Wood, was also withdrawn over her employment of an undocumented immigrant as a nanny.) But Trump’s team took the opposite lesson from the Baird affair, the transition official said. While Baird may have withdrawn from the AG process, she was subsequently named to a variety of government boards by Clinton, President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama. It was hypocritical to cave to the “gotcha” and pull her nomination publicly only to quietly install her in government positions over many years to come, transition officials argued in suggesting that Puzder plow ahead.

And Puzder’s willingness to aide an undocumented worker, however much it may clash with the rhetoric of the Trump administration, is far from the biggest knock on his nomination. His ex-wife accused him of domestic violence in a sworn affidavit, a claim she repeated incognito on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” She subsequently wrote Puzder a letter dated Nov. 19, 1990, which his spokesman provided to The Huffington Post, that reads: “All allegations of abuse of any kind were made in the context of divorce proceedings. I fully withdraw these allegations.” His fast-food restaurants, meanwhile, have been found guilty of an extraordinary number of labor violations.

The situation with his undocumented worker, in which he responded to the discovery humanely, reflects his overall approach to immigration. As recently as 2014, he signed on to a corporate letter that urged Congress to create a more rational immigration system.

All our companies rely on legal immigrants working alongside Americans to keep our businesses growing and contributing to the economy. This is a reality driven by demographics. In 1950, more than half of America’s workers were high school dropouts willing to do physically demanding, low-skilled work. Today, the figure is less than 5 percent. But our businesses still need less-skilled workers – and the need will only grow in years ahead. Baby boomers are retiring: 10,000 older workers are leaving the workforce every day. And after a long downturn, most of our operations are expanding and looking to hire workers.

The problem: there is virtually no legal way for less-skilled foreigners without family in the U.S. to enter the country and work in year-round jobs – effectively no temporary or permanent visas available for non-seasonal workers. Congress has an obligation to fill this gap – we need a visa program for less-skilled foreign workers seeking year-round jobs.

Employers should have to try to hire Americans first. But if they can’t find enough U.S. workers, they should be able to hire foreign workers quickly, easily and legally.

Puzder has repeatedly delayed his confirmation hearings. A Tuesday hearing has been postponed with no new date announced.

As troubling as his record may be to Democrats, a new development may give a boost to his chances. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the scourge of organized labor, is said to be interested in the position if Puzder is defeated or withdraws, according to Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.). With Walker as the alternative, Puzder might start to look more appealing to Senate Democrats.


Walker, meanwhile, says he’s not interested in the job.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b0c1284f278e16

POLITICS

How The Fast-Food Chain Led By Trump’s Labor Nominee Stiffed Workers Again And Again

While Andy Puzder ran Hardee’s, its franchisees altered timecards, deducted pay for uniforms and even broke child labor law.

02/02/2017 08:55 pm ET | Updated 3 days ago

Dave Jamieson
Labor Reporter, The Huffington Post

AL SEIB/LOS ANGELES TIMES VIA GETTY IMAGES
Fast-food mogul Andy Puzder has been nominated to enforce the nation’s labor laws.

• Managers at a Hardee’s restaurant in Alabama scrubbed workers’ hours from the logbooks in order to avoid paying them overtime.
• Hardee’s workers in Pennsylvania were required to pay 10 cents per hour for the privilege of wearing a Hardee’s uniform.
• Workers at a Georgia Hardee’s were told to clock out and sit in the parking lot when business slowed down. When it picked up again, they were told to clock back in and work.
• Managers at a Hardee’s in Missouri had money deducted from their paychecks whenever the cash register came up short.
• Adult workers at a Hardee’s restaurant in Iowa were paid a “sub-minimum wage” that was legal only for minors, while minors worked so late that their hours broke child labor law.

In each of those cases, Labor Department investigators found that Hardee’s restaurants had violated federal wage-and-hour regulations and workers were entitled to thousands of dollars in backpay. Throughout this time, the Hardee’s brand has been overseen by Andrew Puzder, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the next labor secretary.

If he is confirmed by the Senate, Puzder would be responsible for enforcing the same worker protections that his company and its franchisees were caught violating, sometimes repeatedly.

Puzder’s nomination to head the Labor Department has galvanized Democrats and workplace watchdogs, who say his record at Hardee’s and his past statements about workers should disqualify him from the job.

Conservatives and business groups have rallied to his defense. They argue that any Hardee’s violations need to be put in context. There were roughly 2,000 Hardee’s locations as of 2012, and the restaurants highlighted in this story represent a small fraction of them.

The types of wage violations committed by these Hardee’s restaurants are endemic to the fast-food industry at large. All the big chains operate on a similar business model, and their franchisees run afoul of the same laws.

Wage theft is so prevalent in the fast-food industry that the Labor Department developed a targeted enforcement program to crack down on that one sector. During the 2016 fiscal year alone, the Labor Department found violations in 86 percent of fast-food cases investigated, with 10,300 workers owed more than $5.4 million, according to a department spokesman. President Barack Obama’s labor officials attributed the industry’s problems in part to a franchise model that blurs accountability.

Puzder has been a public booster of that model.

With one exception, all the Hardee’s wage theft cases reviewed by HuffPost involved restaurants that were run by franchisees, rather than by Puzder’s company, CKE Restaurants, which also owns the Carl’s Jr. brand. The franchise model allows companies like CKE to outsource restaurant operations ― and certain liabilities ― while retaining a portion of the profits.

Hardee’s workers in Pennsylvania were required to pay 10 cents per hour for the privilege of wearing a Hardee’s uniform.

But all the employees shorted on pay were working under the Hardee’s banner, to the benefit of Hardee’s and CKE, regardless of who was signing the paychecks. As a group of Labor Department officials explain in a petition on Puzder’s nomination that is now circulating, “our experience as the guardians of our nation’s employment laws has taught us that such violations often occur as the result of incentives or practices created by the franchisor.” That would be CKE.

A Hardee’s spokeswoman didn’t respond to questions about how CKE monitors its franchisees’ labor practices, particularly those of repeat violators of the law. The details in this story come from documents on wage theft investigations that The Huffington Post obtained through a public records request.

A common thread through many cases was how managers felt pressured to keep costs down and cut corners, driving them to stiff low-wage workers on pay. Some Hardee’s locations did not want to pay workers at all when the restaurants were not busy.

In a Tennessee case, managers had workers clock out late in the day when restaurant traffic would drop off, even though they had to continue serving the customers who did come in. This led to employees doing unpaid, off-the-clock workfor periods of 30 minutes to three hours. “They are required to punch out to bring down labor costs,” the federal investigator wrote.

Sometimes, the workers were also forced to take an unscheduled lunch or break when not many customers were around. According to the investigator, the owner of the Hardee’s restaurant saw nothing wrong with the practice. “He stated that an employer could send their workers on as many breaks as they wanted,” the investigator wrote.

The franchisee agreed to pay a total of $7,600 in back wages to 29 workers.

A Hardee’s franchise in Georgia shaved labor costs in a similar manner. “Some employees indicated in their interview that managers send them out to the parking lot when the restaurant is not busy and ask them back in when it gets busy,” the investigator wrote. The off-the-clock work and other pay deductions ended up violating both minimum wage and overtime protections.

That franchisee agreed to pay $12,000 to an undisclosed number of employees.

In an Alabama case, a Hardee’s manager had an added incentive to make workers’ hours disappear. As an investigator put it, “this manager shaved hours for all employees in order to receive bonuses.” (Retail and food managers sometimes receive extra pay for hitting payroll targets.) The Labor Department found that 64 employees were shorted on pay when the manager fudged their timecards.

Including other violations, that franchisee agreed to pay $16,000 to the 64 workers.

In a Michigan case, a franchisee who owned two Hardee’s outlets avoided paying workers overtime by compensating them separately for their time at each restaurant. In a single week, for instance, one employee logged 40 hours at one store and 17 at the other. Under the law, she should have received time-and-a-half pay for the extra 17 hours, since all her work was for the same employer. Instead, she was paid “straight time” for it all.

The investigator determined the workers were owed $4,900 in back wages for the lost overtime pay.

Some Hardee’s locations did not want to pay workers at all when the restaurants were not busy.

In other cases, Hardee’s locations violated the law when they deducted money from workers’ pay for the uniforms they wore.

At a Pennsylvania restaurant, the company took out 10 cents for every hour an employee worked in order to cover the cost of providing Hardee’s clothing. Because of the deduction, workers did not receive their full federally mandated time-and-a-half pay when they labored overtime.

The franchisee agreed to hand over more than $2,000 in back pay.

At an Iowa restaurant, workers ponied up $9.80 for red polo shirts with a Hardee’s logo on them. This violated the law because it pushed some workers’ pay below the minimum wage. The franchisee had been reprimanded for the same exact practice five years earlier, the investigator noted.

“He said that his understanding was that the cost of a uniform could not be deducted from the paycheck, but that it was not a violation if the employee paid cash for the required uniform,” the investigator wrote.

The franchisee also broke the law by paying workers a “sub-minimum wage.” It was legal to compensate minors at such a rate in certain circumstances in Iowa, the investigator noted, but some of the people being paid the reduced wage at this Hardee’s were well into their twenties. The franchisee also had a practice of purging workers’ hours from the computer system after paying them.

This franchisee, which employed 12 workers under the age of 16, was cited for 17 child labor violations, many of them for how late the kids were toiling away. One 15-year-old girl told the investigator that she worked as late as 1 a.m. some shifts. The company was cited for $4,000 in back wages and another $14,000 in civil penalties.

But the franchisee ended up selling its Hardee’s locations shortly after the investigation and shut down its operations. According to records, neither the back wages nor the civil penalties were ever paid.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b09bd304ba7f14

http://www.alipac.us/f9/trump%92s-pi...-do%92-341421/

1/13/2009

Obama's Treasury pick d/n pay taxes & had illegal maid

Excerpt:

As an executive in a low-wage industry dominated by “low-skilled” workers (many of them immigrants, and often unauthorized immigrants), Puzder has been an outspoken supporter of low-skilled immigration to the US — and of immigration reform that would legalize unauthorized immigrants who are already here.

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/8/13888146/trump-labor-puzder-andrew-immigration