Trump has assembled a cabinet of deplorables. One of the worst is Andrew Puzder, owner of fast-food chains, who doesn’t believe in workers’ rights or minimum wage.
In this article, JoAnne Wise describes what it was like to work for Hardee’s for 21 years.
“In 1984, I was hired as a cashier at Hardee’s in Columbia, S.C., making $4.25 an hour. By 2005, 21 years later, my pay was only at $8 an hour. That’s a $3.75 raise for a lifetime of work. Adjusted for inflation, it’s only a 2-cent raise.
“Andrew Puzder, the chief executive since 2000 of CKE — which owns Hardee’s, Carl’s Jr., and other fast-food companies — is now in line to become the country’s next labor secretary. The headlines ponder what this may mean for working people in America, but I already know.
“I already know what Trump/Puzder economics look like because I’m living it every day. Despite giving everything I had to Puzder’s company for 21 years, I left without a penny of savings, with no health care and no pension. Now, while I live in poverty, Trump, who promised to fix the rigged economy, has chosen for labor secretary someone who wants to rig it up even more. He’s chosen the chief executive of a company who recently made more than $10 million in a year, while I’m scraping by on Supplemental Security payments.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Can we all say another POS in the Wall?
We all know what the response from the GOP, libertarians, Ayn Randians and free market ghouls will be. Tough luck, you should have studied harder. The GOP has no heart, no empathy and no concern for the poor and the lower middle class. The GOP wants to further punish the poor for the “crime” of being poor. How the hell will health savings accounts, tort reform and buying insurance policies across state lines help real human beings like JoAnne Wise? Puzder is the enemy of the working class but what else would you expect from a charlatan and fraud like Trump.
Companies FORCED into paying employees more than the market will bear have to make CUTS in order to do so. His a lot the CUTS have to come from those same employees in LESS HOURS they can be allowed to work.
One of my son’s used to get overtime, but with the implementation of the higher minimum wage not only did the wage difference between EXPERIENCED employees and new hires disappear, but he now is lucky to get 32 hours a week.
Socialists have no concept how to run a business and repeatedly hurt the lower wage earners in the process. Every time socialists win an area for their UTOPIA, within a few years it becomes a disaster. Want proof? Check out Venezuela. Their work weeks have been cut, some “services” eliminated. There is no toilet paper and a small bag of rice is now $300. The zoo’s have become a source of food for hungry citizens.
Read Venezuela news through other sources from around the world, not our media. They if not this reality while they help promote a similar demise here … IGNORANCE IS BLISS.
Can you explain the rational of Andrew Puzder making over $10 million a year while paying employees not enough to survive? I’m sure he likes living that life style while declaring the necessity to lay off workers when the profits aren’t high enough. He wants mechanization because machines don’t take vacations.
How many other companies operate the same way? Many corporations make billions in profit and still don’t pay decent wages. They qualify for big tax breaks and many get tax refunds from the government.
$$$ is all that counts. As long as that is all that matters, workers will suffer.
Never said it was a perfect system, only that it is better in the long run for everyone involved. Why don’t you try running a big company? Some companies are unfair, but most of the smaller ones try to be good to their employees. Those smaller companies and lower paid employees are the ones that get hurt in the end because of unrealistic demands from individuals that are totally clueless and support a loosing economic profile. It is a complex issue and the answer is not to “throw out the baby with the bath water”, so to speak.
Linda Giffin
America been bery bery bery good to me .
It hasn’t been so good for many and judging by the sentiment in the country, both on the left and the right . Many Americans know they are getting screwed . Those “working class ” voters who voted to Make America Great Again, are telling you that life for them or their children is not so great.
Many contractors are small businesses under 500 employees few have over 100 employees . Some chose to be Union and pay Union wages other choose to pay a subsistence wage without safety protections or bennifits . Now only 12% of the work share today is Union but it used to be 87% . So that leave a whopping 75% that once was done at the higher rate or only 13% that was never done union.Nobody expects the plumber who clears your toilet or the electrician who changes the outlet in your house to be Union. . Translation a there has been a huge race to the bottom. Minimum wage is not a problem when your competitors have to pay it as well. Will it raise the price of a Big Mac a quarter, a price i am willing to pay .
Linda: You need to read about Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Holland. Democratic socialism works. These countries have benefits that we can only dream of in this country: universal health care, free or very cheap university education, 6 week paid vacations, much cheaper medications, unionization rates of 50% to 75%, paid family leave and living wages for the working classes. The child poverty rates in these countries is about 5% or less while it is about 21% in the US.
My comment is in moderation but you are being far to kind.
In this country we can’t even thank a liberal for the little we have .
Which is why we have so much less. While the nation has been blessed with the ability to do so much more than anyone else.
If I had to pick a nation with resources from water ways to minerals and climate show me one in the world who has what we have.
Sorry to break the news to you, but you have no idea of how the economy works. There is no credible evidence that a rising minimum wage is detrimental to employers or employees most studies say it is neutral on employment. The one study we do have that is undeniable is called history . When Unions raised the standard of living(wages) of American workers it was the most prosperous time in American history for both employees and employers . When 37 percent of the private sector workforce was unionized it raised living standards for all workers union and nonunion whose wages had to be somewhat competitive in-order to attract employees. Of course in those days the average CEO only made 40 times what the average worker on the floor got. Today the robber barons are compensated at closer to 400 times the wages of the average worker on the shop floor. In those days only 50% of profits were returned to share holders ( and your puny 401k does not truly make you an investment titan) today 93% of corporate profits are returned to share holders.
These outrageous returns and CEO salaries came out of the hide of the American worker. Further the top marginal tax rate was 93 % yet GDP growth on average was in excess of 4% for decades . When workers are paid more they have disposable income which they can then spend. The multiplier effect or what is known as the velocity of money creates spending ,demand , more employees are hired to meet that demand wages rise as deficits drop because of increased
tax revenues. When that money goes to the investment class it sits there and collects interest or rents .
One of my sons slept in a Holiday Inn Express once. It does not prove anything about the effect on real economics. So we are interested in real economics not personal fables. Further the short term adjustment of the rising minimum wage does not mean that the long term benefits will not far outstrip the short term pain.
As for Venezuela you are right by reading the American corporate owned press we really do not get a full appreciation of what is going on. We don’t get to appreciate that this is the second coup attempt launched by the United States against that left wing government . That Jimmy Carter who witnessed their elections called them fairer than hours . There has been a fifteen year economic war as well as actual CIA involvement in the attempt to overthrow all of left of center governments of Latin America whose policies have delivered substantial improvement to the majority of people cutting poverty dramatically no doubt that the oligarchs had problems with this . Perhaps the biggest problem faced by Maduro and Chevez before him is that unlike Castro he did not lock up his opposition and throw away the key till very recently he did not censor the press.
We always compare Cuba to life in south Florida in the richest country in the world (not due to its people but its geography and resources ) . Give any American the choice to live in Cuba or Honduras, Guatemala,El Salvador and my bet it is they choose Cuba.
Trump was not wrong the other day when he said we kill people too.
Read “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man ” by John Perkins an insider in the world of the IMF and the World Bank turned whistle blower . We have killed plenty but our latest weapon has been economic strangulation to topple regimes. When they are gone POTUS takes a trip to Argentina welcome in the Junta .
http://cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/venezuela-dismantling-a-weapon-of-mass-destruction
ours not hours
You are right, Linda, that small companies should not be treated the same way as large companies, but when is it ever ethical to set up a feudal system that keeps your employees living on the edge while the owners live the high life? The engine driving that kind of behavior is greed; there is no mitigating upside. Part of the culture of a business should be taking care of those who do the work that creates the profits. I am reminded of the story of the man who owned polar fleece who paid his workers after his factory burned to the ground. He valued the role they had played in his company’s success and felt a responsibility to take care of them while he was trying to get the company up and running again. He obviously made a hefty profit from his company but he knew his employees were invested in it as well. The smart thing to do would have been to let them all go and start fresh, but he chose to try to save them as well as the company. They were his family. I would work for a business like that any day of the week over the business that was focused on profits above all else. I would like to say the story ended well. It didn’t but I still admire his dedication to his employees.
There is a very interesting read through the comments on this article. Most comments are pointing to how this story is all made up and ‘fake’ (with links), written by a ghost writer.
Who do we believe? Are people that heartless to say she should have found a different job?
She missed something. The malignant narcissist President Littlefingers Donald Trump plans to drain the swamp, and that swamp, the federal government, and the U.S. Constitution includes Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, Food Stamps, and Social Security.
That means if the conservative Christian white supremacist Alt-Right with their alternative facts and alternative reality succeed, future workers will not have any financial support from the government to survive beyond the poverty wages and no benefits they will be allowed to earn for corporate, paid, slave labor. There will be no retirement. If you can’t work even for poverty wages, you will be allowed to starve to death or freeze as a homeless citizen with no medical.
The Oligarchy can thank their fellow oligarch for a peaceful transition that lasted from the 1930’s to today . Eventually that does not end well for them as we see with despots all through out history. The problem is it does not usually end well for anybody. The poor are seldom the ones to overthrow tyrants. When you take away or threaten to take away all those things that people assumed were a given, the pitch forks will come out and barn fire will be lit.
The overwhelming majority of voters did not vote for “Little hands ” when you count those that did not vote. It will not take long for many who voted for him to know that they have been had.
Crispest the WP article
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Andrew-Puzder-will-be-a-di-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Diane-Ravitch_Economics_Economy_Poverty-170212-967.html
@Linda Griffin, if your son can’t get enough hours, maybe he can find another job. That’s the Republican answer to everything, now isn’t it? Fairness in labor laws isn’t socialism. If you can’t afford to pay a decent wage, then maybe just maybe your business isn’t meant to be. Maybe you can’t afford to be in business. Venezuela’s economic crisis, by the way, is related to the falling prices in oil. Not paying Hardee’s workers a decent wage.
My response which is still in moderation was they Keynesian response .Which till the Nation went bat crazy was excepted by every elected leader no matter what they said in public. To add to your comment , it is far more than minimum wage workers, who need overtime, second jobs or wives involuntarily in the workforce,just to get by.as the the “Economy delivered all wealth to the top few %”
As for Venezuela and Argentina the failures go deeper than oil prices .
After a failed CIA orchestrated coup in 2002 we have now resorted to soft coups in these countries . Coordinating economic pain from court orders that enrich Hedge funds who paid pennies on the dollar for Argentine debt and are now demanding full value , thus restricting access to credit markets . To orchestrating and coordinating street protests and economic shortages by the oligarchs in Venezuela, who guess what have not been Nationalized. Other than oil(resources ) few industries in Venezuela are state owned. Right until month ago there were independent media networks and the elections were described by Jimmy carter as more legitimate than ours .
I take it all back it just posted see how nice an edit button would be for us that can best be described as having a typing deficit especially when any homonym is likely to hit the monitor and not be seen till the post. Teachers don’t tell to proof read . i never see it till the post >
They in the first line was supposed to be the.
Then by your excuse Kate, the entire middle east should be in the same position as Venezuela. Inflation has grown 475% just since 2014. Such a crisis is in government management, not oil prices.
This isn’t about Trump’s ill chosen Secretary of Labor.
Bernie Sanders has said that Trump is a pathological lier. How long before all of the main stream media are recognizing that Trump is narcissistic and mentally unstable? What would happen to this country if Pence were in charge? It wouldn’t be pretty unless you are a millionaire.
CBS News: “It has been a busy day for presidential statements divorced from reality”
Published on Feb 7, 2017
TRANSLATION: President Trump continues to lie, compulsively and pathologically. Pelley: “The president’s claims, whether imaginary or fabricated, are now worrying even his backers. Particularly after he insisted millions of people voted illegally, giving Hillary Clinton her popular vote victory. There’s not one state election official, Democrat or Republican, who supports that claim.”
Thanks, Ms. Wise, for keeping things in perspective by reminding us what these policies look like in real time, and in the lives of real people.
Yes, and why when long term initiatives need support for people affected. Retraining programs, unemployment payments, etc. All kinds of things that Trump and the Republicans will never support.