As a Capitol Hill contract worker, I hope the senators I serve will grill Andrew Puzder, President Trump’s pick to run the Labor Department, about whether he will help workers like me get fair pay for a fair day’s work.
CKE, the huge fast-food corporation Puzder runs, has been repeatedly found guilty of wage theft, the especially greedy crime of stealing from the pockets of its own workers. As Labor Secretary, Puzder’s job will be to stop federal contractors from committing similar wage crimes.
{mosads}Given this contradiction, senators must ask Puzder three simple questions.
First: Mr. Puzder, can a wage thief be trusted to protect workers from other wage thieves?
This question is personally important to me because I was a wage theft victim.
Even though I work for lawmakers, the federal contractor I work for illegally skimmed my paycheck for years. The company misclassified me into a lower-paid job under the Service Contract Act, the minimum wage law for federal contractors.
As a result, I was forced into homelessness because I couldn’t afford to pay the rent.
I’m not the only Capitol Hill contract worker hurt by wage theft. Senate chef Bertrand Olotara was forced to use food stamps to feed his family because his pay was shorted. Capitol cashier Sontia Bailey had to take a second job, even when she was pregnant, and tragically lost her baby because of stress and overwork.
That’s why workers at the Capitol and Senate walked off our jobs on strike with Good Jobs Nation and filed wage theft complaints with the U.S. Department of Labor. After an investigation, the USDOL awarded us more than $1 million.
But justice is still due for the tens of thousands of workers who also have gone on strike to protest wage theft committed by fast food CEOs like Puzder. The workers in the “Fight for $15” movement deserve to know if someone like Puzder can be trusted to take crimes against workers seriously.
Second: Mr. Puzder, will you aggressively investigate wage theft complaints under the Service Contract Act?
Importantly, the minimum wage laws that protect federal contract workers can only be investigated and enforced by the U.S. Labor Department. In other words, federal contract workers like me can’t get a private attorney and go to court to enforce their rights.
That means Puzder will be in charge of the only agency which can stop wage theft on federal contracts.
According to a recent report by the think tank Demos, federal contractors across America steal as much as $2.5 billion dollars every year from the pockets of workers like me. Over the past three years, Good Jobs Nation has filed federal wage theft complaints with the USDOL to recover millions of dollars for more than 1500 federal contract workers at the Pentagon, Smithsonian, Union Station and other national landmarks.
Wage theft on federal contracts is an epidemic and federal contract workers need to know whether Puzder will crack-down on law-breakers.
Third: Mr. Puzder, will you prevent federal contractors – like my employer at the Senate – who habitually violate the SCA and other wage laws, from receiving contracts in the future?
Wage theft is a national crisis because the penalties are too weak. If I robbed a customer at the Senate, I’d go to jail. But none of the executives who stole from Senate contract workers have gotten locked up. And so far, their company has kept its lucrative federal contracts.
That’s why I was excited when I heard that the Department of Labor recently filed a legal action to ban the contractor who stole our wages at the Senate from all federal contracts for three years.
But if Puzder becomes Labor Secretary he will decide whether to move forward with this action or let my employer off the hook.
If he gives a law-breaking corporation a pass, he’ll send a clear message that he’ll run the Labor Department like he ran his fast food company. He’ll also signal that companies can continue to steal from workers and do business with the U.S. government.
The truth is that Puzder needs to be grilled hard because he’s undercut the laws the Department of Labor is responsible for upholding. If the next Labor secretary won’t protect contract workers from wage theft, who will?
Charles Gladden is a food service worker at the U.S. Senate and a leader of Good Jobs Nation, a campaign of low wage federal contract workers fighting to end the federal government’s role as America’s leading low wage job creator.
The views expressed by this author are their own and are not the views of The Hill.