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BEDMINSTER TOWNSHIP, NJ - NOVEMBER 19: (L to R) Andrew Puzder, chief executive of CKE Restaurants, exits after his meeting with president-elect Donald Trump at Trump International Golf Club, November 19, 2016 in Bedminster Township, New Jersey. Trump and his transition team are in the process of filling cabinet and other high level positions for the new administration. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Andy Puzder
BEDMINSTER TOWNSHIP, NJ - NOVEMBER 19: (L to R) Andrew Puzder, chief executive of CKE Restaurants, exits after his meeting with president-elect Donald Trump at Trump International Golf Club, November 19, 2016 in Bedminster Township, New Jersey. Trump and his transition team are in the process of filling cabinet and other high level positions for the new administration. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Andy Puzder

Donald Trump proposes to put fast food CEO Andy Puzder in charge of the Department of Labor, where he could bring his program of wage theft, automation, and sexism to workers nationwide. Unions and worker advocacy groups are not so enthusiastic about this proposal, and one of the ways they’ve tried to register their concern is by tweeting at Puzder. This has revealed something new, interesting, and pathetic about the wealthy, powerful, outspoken political nominee: he has incredibly thin skin. Puzder has been steadily blocking his critics on Twitter:

The Hardees and Carl’s Jr. CEO has blocked the Twitter accounts of at least five labor advocacy groups. This week, he even blocked one of the country’s most prominent union leaders, Mary Kay Henry of the 2-million member Service Employees International Union.

“Yes, the Twitter news is true. A sentence I can’t believe I’m writing,” an SEIU spokesperson told BuzzFeed News on Tuesday evening. The union is the second-largest in the country, and has been the main backer of the Fight For $15 movement to raise wages in the fast food industry.

As a veteran fast food leader opposed to wage hikes, Puzder’s beef with Henry and the SEIU seems clear. But he’s handing out the blocks more liberally than that. The cabinet nominee has also blocked the National Employment Law Project, the Economic Policy Institute, MoveOn.org, the Fight for $15, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights — all organizations that advocate on behalf of workers, especially low-wage workers and workers of color.

These groups are sober, policy-focused, and polite. As NELP’s Judy Conti told Buzzfeed, “We’re not name-calling. There are no ad hominem attacks.” But Puzder apparently can’t even face being tweeted at about New York Times coverage of himself, at least if it’s a progressive think tank doing the tweeting. 

Just think: a labor secretary who doesn’t want to hear from pro-worker groups.

WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 17:  Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee member Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) questions Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump's pick to be the next Secretary of Education, during her confirmation hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill  January 17, 2017 in Washington, DC. DeVos is known for her advocacy of school choice and education voucher programs and is a long-time leader of the Republican Party in Michigan.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Elizabeth Warren has questions for Betsy DeVos
WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 17:  Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee member Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) questions Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump's pick to be the next Secretary of Education, during her confirmation hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill  January 17, 2017 in Washington, DC. DeVos is known for her advocacy of school choice and education voucher programs and is a long-time leader of the Republican Party in Michigan.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Elizabeth Warren has questions for Betsy DeVos

When is a Senate hearing popular viewing? When Elizabeth Warren is doing the questioning:

x

Make that 7.9 million in 15 hours. It’s not just that it’s Elizabeth Warren, though. The person struggling to answer Warren’s questions was Trump education nominee Betsy DeVos, and the subject was predatory for-profit colleges and universities.

Warren went in on Trump University, saying it made her “curious” how the Trump administration would protect students from waste, fraud, and abuse by for-profit colleges. DeVos’s answer: she’d have people for that. Would DeVos enforce rules like the gainful employment rule, which requires that career colleges are actually preparing students for jobs that exist, not cheating them by making big promises and leaving them with loads of debt and no job? DeVos dodged—she’d review the rule—but definitely didn’t commit to enforcing it. Warren:

I don’t understand about reviewing it. We talked about this in my office. There are already rules in place to stop waste, fraud, and abuse, and I don’t understand how you can not be sure about enforcing them. You know, swindlers and crooks are out there doing back flips when they hear an answer like this. If confirmed, you will be the cop on the beat, and if you can’t commit to use the tools that are already available to you in the Department of Education, then I don’t see how you can be the secretary of education.

Betsy DeVos is not here to protect students. That came through loud and clear in her answers to Warren, and millions of people are watching.

PHILADELPHIA, PA - JULY 27:  Senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren speaks onstage at EMILY's List Breaking Through 2016 at the Democratic National Convention at Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts on July 27, 2016 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  (Photo by Paul Zimmerman/Getty Images For EMILY's List)
Sen. Elizabeth Warren
PHILADELPHIA, PA - JULY 27:  Senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren speaks onstage at EMILY's List Breaking Through 2016 at the Democratic National Convention at Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts on July 27, 2016 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  (Photo by Paul Zimmerman/Getty Images For EMILY's List)
Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Remember how Donald Trump claimed he was going to be a champion of the everyday American and champion workers? Sen. Elizabeth Warren does, even as Trump and his team move quickly to shove those promises into the garbage. In a CNN op-ed, Warren details the ways President Obama has improved life for working people, from raising the minimum wage and requiring paid sick leave for federal contractors to expanding overtime to workplace safety protections, and challenges Trump:

Donald Trump doesn't need to reverse these gains. After all, he won the presidency while arguing that he would stand up for workers and promising millions of "high-paying jobs" for working-class Americans. But now he's pulling a fast reversal. The President-elect has already promised to "cancel immediately," "eliminate" or "repeal" Obama's executive orders and agency regulations. If he follows through on that promise, many of these worker benefits will be obliterated. 

The political campaign is over, and Trump is poised to assume the presidency. When it comes to the economic futures of millions of working families, the stakes could not be higher. Americans will judge the President-elect not by his past promises but by his future actions. [...]

Now it's time for Donald Trump to show his true colors. Will he stand with working people? Or will he toss them overboard and cozy up with corporate CEOs and congressional Republicans who are peddling the same tired old anti-worker plans?

You only have to listen to what Trump’s nominees are saying at their confirmation hearings to know what his choice is. But Democrats like Warren are fiercely determined to keep putting what Trump promised America’s workers next to what he’s delivering. Where they can, they’ll fight Trump on rolling back Obama’s advances, and when workers get hit, Democrats will—Democrats must—make clear what really happened here.

People carry signs as they march to protest US President-elect Donald Trump and his administration picks on December 17, in Los Angeles, California. / AFP / DAVID MCNEW        (Photo credit should read DAVID MCNEW/AFP/Getty Images)
People carry signs as they march to protest US President-elect Donald Trump and his administration picks on December 17, in Los Angeles, California. / AFP / DAVID MCNEW        (Photo credit should read DAVID MCNEW/AFP/Getty Images)

Companies are learning the Trump lesson: Give the man something to brag about, even if it’s not true. And if you give him news he doesn’t like, prepare to be publicly trashed, 140 characters at a time. NBC showed both sides of this simultaneously, drawing a classic angry-Donald response with a report on how companies are pretending that Trump deserves credit for good news planned before the election. 

A spate of companies have recently announced that they’ll be adding jobs or deciding against cutting jobs, with those announcements giving implied or explicit credit to Trump. That way, they get on his good side. But, NBC showed, if you look past the headlines—and Trump’s self-congratulatory tweets—it turns out there’s nothing new here:

GM said its plan was approved before the election, but told Bloomberg it was "accelerated" under pressure from Trump, for example.

Wal-Mart's job creation plans are in line with its normal annual increase, and come after it has closed 269 under-performing stores and cut thousands of jobs.

The combined Bayer-Monsanto U.S. R&D spending pledge is roughly what the two companies are already spending, CNBC reported.

And Sprint's jobs were part of a previously announced commitment by its parent company to create 50,000 jobs in the U.S.

Well, Donald Trump was not just going to sit around listening to that! How dare NBC point out that his precious jobs claims were based on nothing much? Obviously, he could not open his Twitter app fast enough, calling NBC “totally biased” and the story “fake news.” “Came back because of me!” he insisted. (You can just imagine his bottom lip sticking out and his jowls quivering as his little fingers scrabbled across the keyboard putting this important message out.)

Are companies playing Trump, or is Trump playing the public? Either way, the blueprint is clear. Trump will claim credit for a steady stream of jobs that would have been created with or without him, or that are nothing more than normal, incremental growth. And as, over time, the media learns to treat his claims skeptically, Trump will use Twitter (and Breitbart, and Fox) to attack the media for the fake, biased act of looking past what Donald Trump says and reporting the facts. And America’s workers will be left to sort out the difference between what they’re seeing reported and their own economic realities.

● Interviews for resistance: Don’t just march this weekend—strike!

● In Connecticut hotels and cafeterias, recruiting a rank-and-file army of organizers.

● Sociologist Jake Rosenfeld on anti-union legislation in Missouri:

It’s clear that some unions do a lot better at motivating their covered members to pay their dues than in other cases. Given the political head winds right now, every union out there facing the threat of a right to work law should be sending staff and calling up those unions that do a good job of getting their members motivated and excited to contribute to the organization that provides their representation.

● More on Betsy DeVos:

A characteristic DeVos move in Lansing traces a familiar pattern. A piece of legislation suddenly appears courtesy of a family ally. It pops up late in the session, late at night, or better still, during lame duck, when the usual legislative horse trading shifts into overdrive. So it was with a controversial bill that popped up 2013, doubling the limits for campaign contributions—a limit that no one in Michigan was wealthy enough to hit. Well almost no one. The GOP jammed the measure through, Governor Snyder signed it, and it took effect immediately. *The DeVoses then got their whole clan together and held a check writing party,* recalls Jeff Irwin, a Democratic state representative from Ann Arbor who was recently term-limited out. *It was a love letter to the richest people in Michigan and they delivered with a huge thank you.*

● Workers Independent News:

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WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 21:  U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) leaves after a House Republican Conference meeting October 20, 2015 at the Capitol in Washington, DC. Rep. Ryan said he is open to run for speaker if House GOPs will unify behind him.  (Photo by Ale
The fight begins now to wipe the smirk off Paul Ryan's face
WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 21:  U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) leaves after a House Republican Conference meeting October 20, 2015 at the Capitol in Washington, DC. Rep. Ryan said he is open to run for speaker if House GOPs will unify behind him.  (Photo by Ale
The fight begins now to wipe the smirk off Paul Ryan's face

Coming soon: Tobacco, unhealthy school lunches, added pollutants, and so much more! The Republican Congress is moving fast to undo as much of President Obama’s legacy as possible, and it’s not just Obamacare, not just the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. You will have a chance to gain a whole new appreciation of how much Obama accomplished … as you watch Republicans dismantle it:

The Koch-affiliated Freedom Partners recently issued a “Roadmap to Repeal” laying out dozens of Obama-era executive actions and agency regulations it says constitutes a “unprecedented onslaught of regulatory costs on the U.S. economy.” The group has assembled a list of dozens of Obama initiatives it wants to see reversed — some can be ended with a stroke of Trump’s pen, others are still in the rulemaking process and can be withdrawn, while still others can be targeted through Congress or the courts. [...]

The House will soon move to undo several recent regulations using the 1996 Congressional Review Act, which includes fast-track procedures to skirt Senate filibusters. Targets could include the stream-protection and overtime measures, as well as regulations on aircraft greenhouse-gas emissions, appliance efficiency standards, and nondiscrimination compliance rules for federal contractors. If those efforts are successful, future presidents could be prevented from re-regulating in those areas.

Don’t miss that last part, about how “future presidents could be prevented from re-regulating in those areas.” That’s why Democrats don’t just need to be thinking about the White House in 2020. We need to be thinking about the governor’s mansions and statehouses in 2018 and redistricting in 2020, so that we can put together majorities to begin undoing all of the damage that Republicans are rushing to do right this minute. 

GRAND RAPIDS, MI - DECEMBER 9: (L to R) President-elect Donald Trump looks on as Betsy DeVos, his nominee for Secretary of Education, speaks at the DeltaPlex Arena, December 9, 2016 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. President-elect Donald Trump is continuing his victory tour across the country. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Betsy DeVos
GRAND RAPIDS, MI - DECEMBER 9: (L to R) President-elect Donald Trump looks on as Betsy DeVos, his nominee for Secretary of Education, speaks at the DeltaPlex Arena, December 9, 2016 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. President-elect Donald Trump is continuing his victory tour across the country. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Betsy DeVos
Campaign Action

Hmmm. Are congressional Republicans trying to bury this one? The confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s education nominee, is now being held at 5 PM ET after having first been pushed back by a week. Not only that, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions has another hearing scheduled for 10 AM ET Wednesday.

An abbreviated hearing would reflect DeVos’s knowledge of her subject matter—she has never taught in, attended, or sent her kids to a public school—but then again, ignorance might be a reason to ask her some questions to establish just how little she understands about education. If she’s honest, she’ll admit that she knows all she wants to: how to use personal wealth to undermine education for millions of kids.

DeVos has used her money to shape the Michigan education system, pushing privatization and undermining local public schools. The result: increased segregation and declining school quality. In Detroit, teachers had to fight to draw attention to rodents, moldy food, and crumbling buildings. DeVos has accumulated a frighteningly anti-LGBT record in her personal giving. The DeVos-influenced years in Michigan education have been a disaster.

Betsy DeVos needs to face serious questioning in her quest to make America Michigan. Democrats cannot let the fact that the hearing is buried in the evening hours stop them from asking those questions—and asking again and again when she dodges.

Protest against labor secretary nominee Andy Puzder.
Protest against labor secretary nominee Andy Puzder.

In “headlines that make me go ‘hmmm:’” Workers Say Andrew Puzder Is ‘Not the One to Protect’ Them, But He’s Been Chosen To.

This New York Times piece by Jodi Kantor and Jennifer Medina deserves some credit for actually including workers’ voices. Sample:

Guadalupe Urrustieta, 47, said that when he was a manager at two Carl’s Jr. locations north of Los Angeles, he was routinely asked by supervisors to make his employees work through unpaid meal breaks without compensation, so that labor costs would not go up. He said he also had to work several hours a week without pay.

“I left the company because I didn’t agree with a lot of the things that were happening,” Mr. Urrustieta said. To him, Mr. Puzder is an improbable labor secretary, “not the one to protect workers.”

But that headline is a harsh reminder of what’s going on with Donald Trump’s cabinet picks. In theory, the labor secretary is in charge of a department with the mission of promoting workers’ welfare, improving working conditions, and “assur[ing] work-related benefits and rights.” In reality, Trump has chosen someone with a record of doing the opposite—and he’s chosen Puzder to keep doing the opposite. His labor secretary has been chosen to hurt workers, and if that’s not an uncommon Republican move, Trump’s being especially blatant about it. Just as his EPA pick is about doing the opposite of protecting the environment, his education secretary pick is committed to dismantling public education, and his energy secretary nominee wanted to abolish the Department of Energy.

So, no, New York Times headline writer, Andy Puzder has not been chosen to protect workers. Even if that’s the actual description of the job he’s been chosen for.

FDA inspects produce at the border
FDA inspects produce at the border

Donald Trump says he’s all about jobs, but at the same time he wants a federal hiring freeze. Supposedly there are just too many federal workers and the government should save money by getting rid of them. Here's the reality:

  • There were an average of 2.8 million federal employees in 2016, representing only 1.9 percent of the nation’s 144 million civilian[2] jobs. This share ties with 2015 for the lowest federal share ever recorded, with data going back to 1939, and it’s far below its post-World War II average of 3.3 percent. (See Figure 1.)
  • The number of federal jobs rose by just 18,000 (0.6 percent) over the last eight years; in contrast, the number of jobs in the country grew by 11.3 million (8.3 percent) during the same period.[3]
  • The number of federal jobs as a share of the nation’s population in 2016 was tied with 2014 and 2015 for its lowest share on record.

Not to mention, these federal jobs include little things like the Centers for Disease Control, Medicare, national parks, food inspection, and other services and protections that many of us kinda like. “Freeze federal hiring” is something that sounds good to some people if you strip it of the specifics so they don’t think about what exactly is being cut. If Trump followed through with the kind of big cuts he’s implying, chances are it would not be a popular move.

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Protest against labor secretary nominee Andy Puzder.
Protest against labor secretary nominee Andy Puzder.
Campaign Action

Donald Trump’s pick for labor secretary is CEO of a fast food chain notorious for wage theft, with a long list of labor law and workplace safety violations. Andy Puzder is basically against the Department of Labor’s entire mission:

To foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers, and retirees of the United States; improve working conditions; advance opportunities for profitable employment; and assure work-related benefits and rights.

Worker advocates are obviously up in arms:

On Thursday, fast-food workers and a variety of others protested Mr. Puzder’s nomination in more than a dozen cities across the country, in some cases at Hardee’s or Carl’s Jr. locations and in front of Department of Labor offices in others.

It would be a bad sign if Democrats weren’t fighting this nomination hard, but happily, they seem ready to fight, from the event held by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Patty Murray at which Carl's Jr. workers told their stories to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s strong condemnation:

“Mr. Puzder has spent his career rigging the system against American workers by opposing the overtime rule, opposing the minimum wage, and underpaying his own workers,” he said in a statement. “His nomination as labor secretary is proof positive that the incoming administration won’t keep its promises to working people.”

The good news—maybe—is that Puzder’s confirmation hearing has been delayed, twice, and currently doesn’t have a date set. 

Read More
LOS ANGELES, CA - NOVEMBER 29: McDonald's restaurant employees rally after walking off the job to demand a $15 per hour wage and union rights during nationwide 'Fight for $15 Day of Disruption' protests on November 29, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. Police made 40 peaceful arrests of protesters who sat down in an intersection. Protest rallies are expected in nearly 20 airports and outside restaurants in numerous cities, according to organizers.  (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
Andy Puzder is not here for these workers
LOS ANGELES, CA - NOVEMBER 29: McDonald's restaurant employees rally after walking off the job to demand a $15 per hour wage and union rights during nationwide 'Fight for $15 Day of Disruption' protests on November 29, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. Police made 40 peaceful arrests of protesters who sat down in an intersection. Protest rallies are expected in nearly 20 airports and outside restaurants in numerous cities, according to organizers.  (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
Andy Puzder is not here for these workers

When it comes time to hold a confirmation hearing for Andrew Puzder, Donald Trump’s pick for labor secretary, Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chair Lamar Alexander doesn’t want to hear from the workers who’ve experienced Puzder’s leadership at the fast food chain he runs. So Sen. Elizabeth Warren invited some Carl’s Jr. workers to meet with her to talk about what it’s like:

"Mr. Pudzer took a company that I loved and turned it into a business that makes money by stealing from its workers," Laura McDonald, a former 20-year employee at Carl's Jr., told the hearing. "I honestly can't think of anyone less qualified to enforce laws that are supposed to protect employees."

McDonald and two other Carl's Jr. employees offered emotional testimonies about their poor working conditions and struggles to get by on a Carl's Jr. salary. Lupe Guzman, a 47-year-old single mother of six who runs the graveyard shift at a Carl's Jr. in Las Vegas, told the senators about surviving on $8.75 per hour in a job she's held for seven years. She said employees don't take breaks mandated by state law and alleged that paychecks excluded hours she'd worked. She also said she's been held up at gunpoint twice, and the company never inquired about her well-being, just whether anything had been stolen. "I mean nothing to them," she said through tears. "I'm just somebody who covers a shift that nobody wants. All they care about is protecting their money."

One of the workers reported that, despite having a job at Carl’s Jr., she needed housing assistance, food stamps, and Medicaid, because her job does not pay enough to live on. It’s a common experience of workers in fast food and retail, and it’s the sort of thing you’d think a labor secretary or legislator might want to fix—by enforcing labor laws or raising the minimum wage—but instead, congressional Republicans and Andy Puzder alike blame workers for the abuses of their employers.

Read More

● Anti-union effort in Kentucky is ripped straight from the Koch playbook.

● Andy Puzder is a horrible boss, a criminal (if you consider labor laws to be laws), and probably the perfect fit for Donald Trump.

● Where should we go on trade?

● Workers Independent News:

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