Fast-food chief who touts immigrant workers gets Labor nod

President-elect Donald Trump has selected fast-food executive Andy Puzder to run the Labor Department, which oversees OSHA, enforces wage rules and manages guest-worker programs on which many farms and others in the food industry rely.  Trump said Puzder “will fight to make American workers safer and more prosperous … and he will save small businesses from the crushing burdens of unnecessary regulations that are stunting job growth and suppressing wages.” Puzder is CEO of CKE Restaurants, which operates the Hardee's and Carl's Jr. burger chains.  Puzder has argued for the need for low-skilled immigrant workers in his industry and others. During a 2013 appearance with the American Enterprise Institute, Puzder said that immigrant workers “always have the thank-God-I-have-this-job attitude.”He was a strong supporter of the Senate's 2013 comprehensive immigration reform bill that would have offered illegal immigrants a path to citizenship and expanded access to low-skilled guest workers. His one gripe about the bill was the amount of spending it would have devoted to border security, a central priority of the Trump campaign. “I don't know when it became a conservative Republican principle that increasing the size and intrusiveness of government was a good thing,” Puzder said at the 2013 forum.One issue that will give some in agriculture pause is that he supports the E-Verify system and says it has helped ensure that workers in his restaurants are legal. Growers have been fighting mandatory E-Verify bills in Congress, saying they won't be able to hire enough legal workers until Congress acts on broader immigration reform. There are also differences in the restaurant industry over E-Verify.