Liberal and conservative groups squared off Tuesday in battle to define the public image of Donald Trump’s nominee to be labor secretary, fast-food businessman Andrew Puzder.
Activists on both sides released dueling surveys of job satisfaction for workers at CKE Restaurants, the franchise where Puzder serves as chief executive officer — with wildly different findings.
Their efforts were released the same day that the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee postponed hearings on Puzder’s nomination until February. Liberals took the delay as a sign that they were winning the public relations fight.
“The delay is good news because it means they are getting scared,” said Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., leader of the House Progressive Caucus who is running to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Puzder’s hearing is being delayed because the confirmation hearing for education nominee Betsy DeVos was moved to Jan. 17, the day the committee had tentatively scheduled for Puzder’s hearing.
Puzder has been an outspoken critic of government regulations and of the Obama administration’s efforts to expand labor and workplace regulations. He has argued, for example, that Obamacare was responsible for slowing the economy. His nomination has drawn cheers from business groups and conservatives and denounced by the liberals and Democrats.
The Employment Policies Institute, a conservative group, was the first out with a survey on Tuesday. Its report showed that workers for CKE’s franchisees had high levels of workplace satisfaction, with 92 percent calling Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s great places to work and 93 percent of women reporting that they feel “safe and respected.”
The results were based on a survey of 262 people based on “3,503 employee phone numbers that were provided directly from Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s franchisees.” An estimated 75,000 people work for franchises of CKE Restaurants.
Michael Lotito, co-chairman of the pro-business Workplace Policy Institute, said the survey’s results showed that that Puzder promoted a “whole spirit and culture of compliance [with the law] down throughout the entire system.”
The same day, liberal members of Congress held a Capitol Hill press conference to promote a survey by the Restaurant Opportunities Center United, a nonprofit activist group, of workers at Hardee’s, Carl’s Jr. and other CKE Restaurant franchises.
Their survey said that abusive conditions were common at those restaurants, with 38 percent workers saying they were forced to work off the clock and 32 percent saying they were not paid overtime. It also found that female employees reported sexual harassment at a rate 50 percent higher than that of other fast-food restaurants.
“Having somebody with this kind of record in charge of the Labor Department will have a devastating impact for workers,” said Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis.
Pollsters for two companies that do presidential and national surveys, however, said the Restaurant Opportunities Center United’s survey results could not be taken as representative of workers. The method the nonprofit used involved reaching out to people through social media such as Facebook. That would result in a “self-selection bias” that would likely skew the results, said the pollsters, who requested anonymity rather than appear as if they were taking sides in a partisan fight.
“Ideally, what would have been good would be to get a list of people who worked at the restaurants” and get responses from a random group of them, one pollster said. The nonprofit may not have had access to that information, the pollster added, so the method they used may have been the only option they had.
Ellison, however, bristled when the Washington Examiner asked about the survey’s methodology during Tuesday’s press conference. He insisted the survey was representative but added, “We are not presenting ourselves as statisticians. What we are representing are real people.”
He then characterized the Washington Examiner’s inquiry as an attempt to trip them up over the “fine details” and to make it look as though they “didn’t have their act together.”
Diana Ramirez, executive director of the nonprofit’s Washington office, directed the question to another individual at the nonprofit. The individual has not responded.
