Andy Puzder is the CEO of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, two companies best known for strange adolescent-male-based commercial targeting. The commercials go beyond the pale—seriously, I am a guy and their commercials are like comedy sketches gone terrible. Andy Puzder is probably best known for saying that managers at fast food places prefer the “sense of accomplishment that comes from being a salaried manager” to being paid for their overtime. That was Puzder writing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal because he was freaking out at the time over Barack Obama’s plan to expand overtime eligibility. Guess who is back with a new, passive aggressive attack on workers, and has the WSJ on speed dial? That’s right!
The CEO of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's has visited the fully automated restaurant Eatsa — and it's given him some ideas on how to deal with rising minimum wages.
"I want to try it," CEO Andy Puzder told Business Insider of his automated restaurant plans. "We could have a restaurant that's focused on all-natural products and is much like an Eatsa, where you order on a kiosk, you pay with a credit or debit card, your order pops up, and you never see a person."
Hey, listen, automation has always been one of the realities of technology and our future workforce. Puzder is just looking ahead, right?
"This is the problem with Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton, and progressives who push very hard to raise the minimum wage," says Puzder. "Does it really help if Sally makes $3 more an hour if Suzie has no job?"
This line of reasoning has always kept greedy little gnomes like Puzder in good stead with the more conservative members in our society—people who emotionally invest in metaphysical “bootstraps.” Unfortunately, as many people are becoming more and more hip to, Andy Puzder and other fast food CEOs are full of it when it comes to how they “pay” for their workforce. They don’t. We do. The tax payer pays for the assistance programs that help to pay for CEO’s like Puzder’s diamond-encrusted-souls.
"If you're making labor more expensive, and automation less expensive — this is not rocket science," says Puzder.
Once again, Puzder—your “labor” is almost entirely subsidized by corporate welfare and citizen’s tax dollars. Andy Puzder proceeds to wax poetic on how awesome and sexy machines are.
"They're always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case," says Puzder of swapping employees for machines.
They never take a vacation! Asshat!