Fast-food CEO Andy Puzder, Donald Trump's pick for labor secretary, is a big fan of robots-and not so much of humans. In an interview with Business Insider last March, Puzder had this to say about our robotic little friends: "They're always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case."
Correspondingly, Puzder's record makes clear that the wants and needs of human workers repel and disgust him. He's opposed increases to the minimum wage, and the extension of overtime eligibility to workers making more than $23,000 a year. His fast-food outlets have been penalized for violating minimum-wage laws. And as his Business Insider disquisition makes clear, things like employee vacations and slipping on the job-things that come out of Puzer's profits, that is-drive him batty.
When the Senate convenes in January to consider Trump's cabinet nominations, it might be prudent for the solons to apply Puzder's tests for human frailty to the nominees-at minimum, to Puzder himself. Is he always polite? Has he been known to take vacations? Or slip? Or fall? If so, wouldn't a robot do a better job? Any robot programmed to become labor secretary, after all, would likely understand better than Puzder that its mission is to advance rather than retard the interests of American workers.
The senators should heed Puzder's advice: Reject his nomination and petition Trump to send them a robot, which, by any criterion, including that of human empathy, would be more qualified than the current nominee.
