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.