Two-thirds of female fast food workers at restaurants operated by Andrew Puzder, Donald Trump’s controversial nomination for US labor secretary, experienced sexual harassment at work, a rate much higher than the industry average, a stinging advocacy survey has claimed.
Many female workers, according to the research conducted by Restaurant Opportunities Center (Roc) United, have been harassed by customers referencing the highly sexualised advertising campaigns Puzder has championed as CEO of CKE Restaurants, the parent company of chains including Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s.
“Customers have asked why I don’t dress like the women in the commercials,” one Tennessee-based Hardee’s employee told researchers.
“I continually get notes left on tables from customers, customers flirt or ask me out,” said another Carl’s Jr employee in California. “I have also been followed outside the store by customers.”
Puzder, CEO of the billion-dollar company since 2000, has staunchly defended his company’s notorious advertising that often features scantily dressed women eating burgers in scenes some have compared to pornography, arguing in 2011: “We believe in putting hot models in our commercials, because ugly ones don’t sell burgers.”
The rate of sexual harassment across the fast food industry is already high, with 40% of female workers reporting some form of unwanted contact, according to recent polling. But researchers at Roc United, a dedicated nonprofit that advocates for restaurant workers’ rights, argued the 66% reporting rate found among CKE employees was “disturbing”.
Puzder, who has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Trump campaign and the Republican party, is also an outspoken critic of increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 and the expansion of rights to overtime pay. CKE Restaurants has settled a number of multimillion-dollar class action lawsuits brought by employees in relation to pay and conditions and, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, were subject to similar class actions cases in California years later.
The Roc United study of employees also found that close to a third of the 564 workers surveyed had experienced a form of wage theft, such as failed overtime payments, inadequate work breaks and performing multiple duties without adequate compensation.
Of workers surveyed in California, where the majority of the sample was taken from, 32% said they were not given meal breaks after working more than five hours, a violation of the state’s strict worker’s break laws; 79% of survey respondents said they had served or prepared food while they were sick.
“I was constantly pressured to cut labor costs – this meant that employees were stressed out and customer service suffered because there weren’t enough employees working on my shifts,” Abel Gonzalez, a 42-year-old Carl’s Jr employee in Los Angeles, told researchers.
CKE Restaurants did not respond to a request for comment on the research findings, but Elizabeth Johnson, a spokeswoman for the president-elect’s transition team who was not contacted by the Guardian, sent an emailed statement, dismissing the report as “fake news” that was “paid for by unions and special interests opposed to Andy Puzder’s nomination”.
Johnson accused the union of “attempting to smear” Puzder by using “leading questions and deceitful surveying tactics, such as posing as CKE corporate representatives”. The spokeswoman provided no evidence for the allegations.
Jayaraman, the director of the Food Labor Research Center at University of California, Berkeley, dismissed Johnson’s claims as “laughable” and false. “Clearly they don’t know how survey research is done,” she said. “There is no way for us to pose as anything when we’re asking staff to voluntarily fill out a survey online.”
Roc United researchers also interviewed CKE staff members at stores in four states and, Jayaraman said, identified themselves as researchers before commencing with surveys as well as identifying employees through online social media.
The academic said the sample size of 564, taken from states across the US, was more than enough to draw conclusions about entire workforce of over 20,000.
“When we are looking to do research on a whole metropolitan area, like New York City or Los Angeles,” Jayaraman said, “500 is the survey number we use to understand how working conditions in a whole metropolitan area, and bearing in mind you’re talking about 10 million people and 200,000, 300,000.”
On Tuesday afternoon, current and former employees of Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s spoke for nearly two hours before a panel of convened by Senate Democrats about the poor working conditions and wages at the fast food chains under Puzder’s ownership.
During the emotional testimony, one woman described the hardships of raising six children on a salary of only $8.75 an hour after seven years.
“I work almost every day and am still considered poor,” Lupe Guzman said, who displayed a framed photograph of her children on the table next to her. She added: “People like Andrew Puzder don’t see how regular Americans are living day to day.”
Laura McDonald, a former general manager at Carl’s Jr, who is part of a class action lawsuit against CKE concerning overtime pay, said she couldn’t think of “anyone less qualified” to run the Department of Labor, an agency that has traditionally existed to protect workers.
“He never protected the employees at CKE when he was in charge so I don’t think he would be the person to protect American workers’ rights,” McDonald said.
Democrats have identified Puzder as one of eight nominees who say have particularly “troublesome” backgrounds. The fast food CEO is an opponent of efforts to raise the minimum wage, a movement that is largely led by industry workers. He is also a critic of sick leave policies and supports repealing the Affordable Care Act.
Democrats and labor leaders have argued that his appointment is akin to letting the fox guard the henhouse, and cannot be trusted to protect workers’ interests.
“This is not right,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat of Massachusetts said as Guzman spoke about the difficulty of raising a family on a minimum wage salary.
“This is what the secretary of labor is supposed to stand up for - is people like you. We’re here to start the real inquiry about whether or not Mr Puzder is a person who can be trusted to stand up for you and all of the workers of America.”