Donald Trump has nominated fast-food CEO Andrew Puzder to lead the Department of Labor. This is a bad choice for working people.

This pick betrays the spirit of the Trump campaign and threatens to leave working people more vulnerable to abusive employers.

Puzder opposes raising the minimum wage and says workers don’t need overtime and should instead be happy with a “sense of accomplishment.”

Puzder has used his position and authority as a fast-food CEO to enrich himself at the expense of working people by violating labor law.

One investigation found that more than half of the Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s restaurants reviewed weren’t paying workers what they were owed.

He refused to pay his managers the overtime they earned and said he’d like to replace human workers with machines, because machines “never take a vacation … there’s never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex or race discrimination case,” according to various reports.

People who work at his restaurants make poverty wages while he made more money last year in one day than one of his full-time minimum wage workers makes in a year.

All of these reasons make Puzder unfit to run the agency tasked with protecting people at work.

Brenda Michaels

Issaquah