Fast food CEO Andy Puzder’s confirmation hearing as labor secretary has reportedly hit a fifth delay, and all this delay is starting to sound like a death knell for his confirmation chances. In short:

It can’t help that Puzder once employed an undocumented housekeeper, though Ryan Grim reports that:

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.

Big talk, but so far Republicans don’t appear to be eager to put that to the test of a Senate confirmation hearing.

As of January 1, companies will have to make public how much their CEOs make compared to what their average workers make. They don’t like that rule so much—enacted thanks to Dodd-Frank—and they might be able to get it killed.

On Monday, the acting chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Michael Piwowar, called for reconsideration of the rule that went into effect on January 1, hinting that it could be reversed.

“[I]t is my understanding that some issuers have begun to encounter unanticipated compliance difficulties that may hinder them in meeting the reporting deadline,” he wrote. So he called for a new period of public input over the next 45 days, after which he will direct the SEC staff to “reconsider the implementation of the rule based on any comments submitted and to determine as promptly as possible whether additional guidance or relief may be appropriate.”

Translation: Companies don’t want people to know how much more their CEOs make than the median worker, and rather than admitting that they don’t want people to know that, they’re calling it “unanticipated compliance difficulties.”

This rule isn’t something Republicans can just kill off immediately, but that’s clearly the direction they’re headed. Businesses have a lot to hide, after all. Like how CEOs make 276 times more than typical workers, while the corporate world lobbies against policies that benefit workers, like paid sick leave, paid family leave, or increased minimum wage.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is stocking his cabinet with former CEOs.

The Senate will vote early in the coming week on whether to confirm an education secretary who has never attended public school, never sent her kids to public school, never worked as an educator, never had anything to do with education but using her money to try to privatize public education. She’s largely had her way in Michigan, and it’s been a disaster for Michigan students, schools, and teachers. Now Donald Trump wants to give her a chance to do the same to the whole country. 

And we just need one more vote to defeat her. 

I’m not going to lie, it’s a long shot. We’re talking about getting a Republican to do the right thing, when the person they’d be rejecting is a huge Republican donor. But you can’t win if you don’t try. So what are you doing this weekend?

If you’re one of their constituents, give Deb Fischer (Nebraska) and Dean Heller (Nevada) and Jeff Flake (Arizona) and John McCain (Arizona) and Cory Gardner (Colorado) and Dan Sullivan (Alaska) and John Hoeven (North Dakota) reason to stop and think about whether DeVos is worth it. Even if your Republican senator isn’t on that list of potential targets, give them a call. Find out if one of them will be meeting with the public over the next few days and show up. Let them know that Betsy DeVos is not an acceptable choice.

You can guess how Fox News framed a good January jobs report, right?

Fox News correspondent Heather Nauert praised the January jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on the February 3 edition of Fox & Friends, referring to it as “the first jobs report under President Trump” and labeling it as “fantastic news.” Nauert praised the report for showing that 227,000 new jobs were created in January, which she described as “a lot more than expected.” Nauert failed to mention Barack Obama, who was still the president of the United States for most of January. She concluded the segment by reiterating that this is “great news on the jobs front this morning” and suggesting Trump “would call that huge.”

He was president for 11 entire days of January, after all. That’s time to make a HUGE difference on jobs. Except, uh:

University of Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee, a former chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors, pointed out that the "reference week" for the latest jobs data ran through January 12, meaning the entire report predates the Trump administration by over a week. Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler, who runs the paper's fact-checking research, also noted that the report "still reflects the Obama administration.” Fox also neglected to mention that the report marks 76 consecutive months of job growth -- the longest on record -- for Obama.

I can’t wait to hear how they manage to blame Obama when there’s a month of job loss that comes—legitimately—under Trump.

The scope of wage theft and general mistreatment of workers at Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. under Andy Puzder’s leadership is staggering. Dave Jamieson rounds up some of the details of what workers have experienced—and can expect going forward—under Donald Trump’s labor secretary pick. In several cases, workers had to clock out but keep working, or clock out but sit around waiting for it to get busy enough for them to go back on the clock:

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 work for 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. 

Managers in Georgia and Alabama engaged in similar practices. Then there was this:

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.

In several other cases, the amount workers were made to pay for their uniforms pushed their pay below minimum wage or below time-and-a-half for overtime. Another franchisee broke child labor laws. 

Donald Trump likes to talk about creating jobs, but he talks a lot less about what kind of jobs he wants to create. A look at the person he wants to put in charge of the Labor Department tells us a lot. Mostly it tells us variations on “be afraid,” but from working off the clock to child labor violations, there sure are a lot of reasons to be afraid.

Ouch. Andy Puzder, the fast food CEO Donald Trump wants to put in charge of the Labor Department, had his confirmation hearing delayed for a fourth time earlier this week. The latest delay is reportedly because of hold-ups with his ethics review. He’s not pulling out, though, despite being called on to do something his future boss man flatly refused to do:

Puzder began working on his ethics paperwork three weeks ago but encountered complications because CKE, which includes burger chains Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, is privately held, spokesman George Thompson said. Shares of publicly held companies can be sold easily on the stock market, but it can be more difficult to offload private holdings.

If confirmed, Puzder would step down as chief executive of his fast-food business.

Initially, Puzder wanted to move his stake in the company into a blind trust but was told by the Office of Government Ethics that he would need to divest, Thompson said. 

Even without a hearing to draw attention to his awfulness, Puzder faces growing opposition. Campaign for Accountability has asked a court to unseal Puzder's divorce records, while 100 food and agricultural groups, including Friends of the Earth, Food Chain Workers Alliance, and Corporate Accountability International, have come out in opposition to Puzder as labor secretary. 

Oddly enough, having run a company that commits rampant wage theft raises some eyebrows when you seek to be put in charge of preventing and punishing wage theft.

● Ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh. (See above.)

● And speaking of which, five steps to maintain unity and membership under right to work.

● Sarah Jaffe: #DeleteUber is introducing a new generation to the horrors of scabbing.

These days (and in this economy), we’re more likely to hear justifications for crossing a picket line that are born of necessity, but also of the ascendance of neoliberal, me-first ideology. “I have to take care of myself,” people will argue. “No one else is going to do it for me.”

Yet the promise of the labor movement, summed up in the old Industrial Workers of the World slogan “An injury to one is an injury to all,” is that we will, in fact, take care of each other. It is in that spirit that the taxi workers struck, and in that spirit that protesters struck back at Uber. And indeed, according to the Taxi Workers’ statement, Uber drivers were among those who struck Saturday night, and the union stressed its representation of Uber and Lyft drivers as well as those who drive traditional cabs.

● Trump's labor pick's restaurants had cooks 'puking into the garbage.'

● Interviews for resistance: Why teachers unions are the best bet to transform the labor movement.

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●  Workers Independent News:

Federal workers will suffer under Donald Trump, through hiring and pay freezes, being called on to do terrible and questionably legal things, and being targeted for abuse and repression. But many of them are ready to fight—as professionals committed to making the government work, even if that just means preventing the worst abuses of the Trump regime:

At a church in Columbia Heights last weekend, dozens of federal workers attended a support group for civil servants seeking a forum to discuss their opposition to the Trump administration. And 180 federal employees have signed up for a workshop next weekend, where experts will offer advice on workers’ rights and how they can express civil disobedience.

At the Justice Department, an employee in the division that administers grants to nonprofits fighting domestic violence and researching sex crimes said the office has been planning to slow its work and to file complaints with the inspector general’s office if asked to shift grants away from their mission.

“You’re going to see the bureaucrats using time to their advantage,” said the employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Through leaks to news organizations and internal complaints, he said, “people here will resist and push back against orders they find unconscionable.”

The State Department has a preexisting way for workers to register dissent, allegedly without fear of retaliation, and Trump’s Muslim ban has lit up the dissent channel:

By 4 p.m. on Tuesday, the letter had attracted around 1,000 signatures, State Department officials said, far more than any dissent cable in recent years. It was being delivered to management, and department officials said more diplomats wanted to add their names to it. 

Names continued being added even after White House press secretary Sean Spicer threatened the workers signing it, saying they should “get with the program or they can go.” Who knows what four years of Donald Trump will do to the ranks of federal workers, but they’re not going down without a fight—a fight not for partisan objectives but for competence and the rule of law.

Betsy DeVos, the education secretary nominee who hates public education, is getting some air support from the 45committee, a group that seems to specialize in advertising for Donald Trump’s worst nominees:

The 45committee has previously run ads for attorney general nominee Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III and health and human services nominee Tom Price. So, the woman who has no experience in public education other than spending her family’s billions to destroy it and wants to keep guns in schools because of “potential grizzlies;" the man who was too racist to be a federal judge in 1986, but is now in line to be in charge of federal civil rights enforcement; and the man whose top interest in health policy is either taking health care from people or profiting from insider trading on health-related businesses, but we’re not sure which. That is some damn fine company.

Meanwhile, 248 civil rights groups signed a letter opposing confirmation for DeVos.

There’s bad news and … well, there’s bad news. Union density continued its long decline in 2016:

In 2016, the share of workers who were members of a union decreased 0.4 percentage point to 10.7 percent, continuing a downward trend that has occurred since at least the early 1980s, when directly comparable data became available[.]

It’s not just the union membership rate, it’s also the raw numbers:

In addition to a 0.4 percentage-point drop in membership rate, there were also 240,000 less union workers in 2016 than in 2015[.]

And that’s before Donald Trump gets his hands on things. Although plenty of other Republicans and their corporate bosses have been at work on this for years.

The terrible stories about Andy Puzder, the fast food CEO Donald Trump thinks should be in charge of federal labor law enforcement, just keep rolling in. And look! The president who’s publicly threatening companies that move jobs to other countries while making them private promises of goodies if they stay has demonstrated his commitment to American jobs by nominating a labor secretary who has sent jobs overseas himself.

Puzder's company, CKE Restaurants Inc., notified the government in August 2010 that it was outsourcing its restaurant information technology division to the Philippines. Doing so, the agency found, "contributed importantly" to the layoffs of both CKE employees and those of an outside staffing firm at an Anaheim, California, facility. The agency's finding made workers eligible for federally funded benefits meant to dampen the impact of globalization on employees.

It was only 20 jobs, which makes him small-time in the outsourcing business, but it’s still an achievement. After all, it’s hard to move fast food jobs out of the communities where people are walking in and buying burgers, but Puzder managed it. 

Naturally, CKE claims it was all about quality:

In its statement, CKE defended its decision to move its IT division overseas. "The existing CKE restaurant support staff was insufficient to adequately cover the disproportionately high volume of help desk calls that occur during the early morning hours and to provide full, 24 hours per day, seven days per week coverage. So, CKE shifted its small help desk services team to a firm that provides both offshore and onshore support."

So … what they’re saying is that rather than hire more people in the U.S. at high volume times, they cut jobs in the U.S. to outsource. Boy, that makes it sound so much better.

Then again, Donald Trump campaigned as a champion of American manufacturing jobs despite sourcing his Trump-branded shirts and ties and suits from around the world, so we’ve established that this whole “American jobs” thing is entirely “do as I say, not as I do.”