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.”