Labor unions and law enforcement officials have condemned President-elect Donald Trump’s “cruel and baffling” nomination of fast food executive Andrew Puzder for labor secretary on Thursday.

“Trump has once again shown how out-of-touch he is with what working Americans need,” said Service Employees International Union (SEIU) head Mary Kay Henry, calling the appointment “anti-worker extremism”. Trump hurts “working families, including those who elected him” with the nomination, she wrote on behalf of the union.

Their comments come as decades-old allegations of spousal abuse against Puzder have resurfaced, which may further complicate his nomination.

Labor activists in the Fight for $15 movement said Puzder’s nomination signaled a shift away from the progress made during the Obama years.

Carl’s Jr cook Rogelio Hernandez called Puzder, whose company CKE owns the chain, “one of the worst fast food CEOs”, adding that his appointment “sends a signal to workers that the Trump years are going to be about low pay, wage theft, sexual harassment and racial discrimination”.

In a statement announcing the nomination on Thursday, the president-elect said Puzder’s “record [of] fighting for workers makes him the idea candidate to lead” the department.

“Andy will fight to make American workers safer and more prosperous by enforcing fair occupational safety standards and ensuring workers receive the benefits they deserve, and he will save small businesses from the crushing burdens of unnecessary regulations that are stunting job growth and suppressing wages,” Trump said.

But in a forceful indictment of Puzder’s credentials, New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman said that under Puzder, CKE “stole” from low-wage workers

“Andrew Puzder presided over a fast-food chain that repeatedly stole workers’ hard-earned wages,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “The fact that Mr Puzder has now reportedly been selected to lead the same agency that uncovered wage theft at his restaurants is a cruel and baffling decision by President-elect Trump.”

Puzder’s ex-wife Lisa Henning, now Fierstein, accused him of spousal abuse in 1989. According to the Riverfront Times and the St Louis Post-Dispatch, Henning said in court filings that Puzder “attacked me, choked me, threw me to the floor, hit me in the head, pushed his knees into my chest, twisted my arm and dragged me on the floor, threw me against a wall, tried to stop my call to 911 and kicked me in the lower back”.

Puzder denied the abuse at the time and again later in a deposition for his divorce, calling his ex-wife’s allegations “baseless”.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung emailed the Guardian a statement which he attributed to Fierstein saying that she had long since withdrawn the allegations against her former husband.

The Guardian was unable to contact Fierstein directly to confirm this and Cheung did not respond to further queries.

The allegations threatened to interrupt Puzder’s work as a prominent lawyer for then Missouri governor John Ashcroft’s taskforce on abortion. When news of Henning’s accusations were published, Puzder offered to step down from the organization because he didn’t “want to be an embarrassment to the governor or an impediment to the work of the taskforce”. Puzder helped to write a law restricting abortions in the state.

Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison said Puzder was not to be trusted. “How can we expect Puzder to do his job and protect workers when his own employees are having their wages stolen?” said Ellison. “Good jobs and fair wages aren’t in Puzder’s vocabulary.”

Both the congressman and Hernandez, the fast food cook, pointed out the gulf between Puzder’s salary and Hernandez’s own wages. “Puzder is paid more in one day than we each make in one year working at his restaurant chains, and that’s the way he wants to keep it,” Hernandez said.

Ellison concurred: “While he takes home a multimillion-dollar salary, many of his own employees are barely getting by.”

Puzder opposes an increased minimum wage and a lower threshold for overtime pay, both of which would raise costs at the restaurant company’s main businesses: hamburger chains Hardees and Carl’s Jr. Earlier this year the executive made headlines when he moved the company headquarters from Carpinteria, California, to Nashville, Tennessee, where there is no state tax on personal income. In 2012, Puzder’s compensation from CKE was $4.4m.

Puzder also drew controversy last year with Carl’s Jr Super Bowl ads starring scantily clad models devouring hamburgers, which he characterized as patriotic at the time.

“I like beautiful women eating burgers in bikinis,” he told Entrepreneur magazine. “I think it’s very American,” he said. “I used to hear, brands take on the personality of the CEO. And I rarely thought that was true, but I think this one, in this case, it kind of did take on my personality.”

CKE is a privately held company. In 2013 the company was acquired by Roark Capital Group, an Atlanta-based private equity firm named for Howard Roark, the leading protagonist in Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead. Rand and her books remain significant influences on American libertarians and conservatives.

Not all conservatives were pleased by the nomination, however. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (Fair), an anti-immigration group, criticized the choice of Puzder based on his support for the eventual citizenship of undocumented workers.

“Puzder has served as an executive of a fast food conglomerate – an industry that has thrived on low-wage labor, illegal workers, and which has lobbied for greater access to foreign guest workers to maximize corporate profits,” Fair president Dan Stein wrote.

SEIU’s Henry said the only way forward was solidarity. “Together, workers in the Fight for $15 movement have made the kind of economic change America is crying out for by paving the way for 20 million people to get a raise,” she wrote. “SEIU members will not back down.”

Ellison agreed. “Working people must rise up and fight back against this nomination and continue to demand higher wages, overtime pay and good benefits,” he said. “They deserve a fair share of the wealth they are creating in this country.”