Andy Puzder Withdraws As Nominee For Labor Secretary | HuffPost Latest News

Andy Puzder confirmed Wednesday afternoon that he will pull himself from consideration for labor secretary. He is the first of President Donald Trumps nominees to not make it through the confirmation process.

In a statement, Puzder praised the highly qualified team of Trump picks that he will no longer be joining.

I want to thank President Trump for his nomination, Puzder said. I also thank my family, and my many supporters employees, businesses, friends and people who have voiced their praise and hopeful optimism for the policies and new thinking I would have brought to America as Secretary of Labor.

The move came as support evaporated among Republicans for the former fast-food executive. At least seven Republican senators refused to publicly back the former chief executive of CKE Restaurants, which owns the burger chains Carls Jr. and Hardees, as criticism mounted over his hefty stack of labor violations and long-standing support for increased immigration.

After five separate delays, his confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee was scheduled for Thursday. Puzder is the 13th Cabinet pick in history to withdraw his nomination and the first since Tom Daschle dropped from consideration to head the Department of Health and Human Services in 2009.

Puzder needed support from at least 50 of the 52 Republicans in the Senate, as no Democrats or independents had pledged to vote for him. The nominee could have yielded the closest vote since Vice President Mike Pence cast a historic tie-breaking vote to confirm Education Secretary Betsy DeVos earlier this month.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), one of the Senates most vocal opponents of Trumps nominees, sounded ready for the withdrawal Wednesday.

Reports say that Andy Puzder is tired & may withdraw his @USDOL nomination. If he cant stand the heat, he should get out of the kitchen.

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Reports say that Andy Puzder is tired & may withdraw his @USDOL nomination. If he cant stand the heat, he should get out of the kitchen.
Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 15, 2017

Labor groups who opposed Puzders nomination used the news to remind the president what they hope for in the next labor secretary.

We urge President Trump to listen to the American people, remain mindful of the promises he made to working families during the campaign and in his inaugural address, and nominate a candidate for secretary of labor who will always put workers first and foremost, Christine Owens, the executive director of the nonprofit National Employment Law Project, said in a statement. Any less, and the American people will once again say NO to a secretary who doesnt speak for Americas workers.

Puzder was a controversial pick to lead a department with the explicit mission to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners. His company repeatedly stiffed its badly paid workers, whom Puzder suggested should be replaced by machines. He opposes raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

When Donald Trump first tapped Andy Puzder to be labor secretary, fast-food workers told the President that if he sided with fast-food CEOs instead of fast-food workers, hed be on the wrong side of history, Darin Brooks, a Hardees worker campaigning in North Carolina for the Fight for $15 labor movement, said in a statement. And today, we are on the right side of history. This is a major victory for the Fight for $15, but we cant and wont back down until the Trump Administration gives us a real labor secretary who will put working people over corporate profits.

After Puzder became CEO in 2000, Carls Jr. and Hardees were hit with more federal employment discrimination lawsuits than any other major burger chain in the country, according to an investigation published last month by Capital & Main , a California-based investigative news outlet. The company failed to send new workers to staff restaurants after a 2014 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement audit forced the franchises to fire some 1,200 workers in a matter of days, as HuffPost reported .