Obama derides workers who go on strike — ‘You’d get fired, right?’

Does President Barack Obama think House Republicans should form a union? If not, it’s hard to make much sense out of his latest speech at a business in Rockville, Md., in which he equated House Republicans’ decision not to support a budget that would fund ObamaCare to disgruntled workers going on strike: If you are...

Does President Barack Obama think House Republicans should form a union?

If not, it’s hard to make much sense out of his latest speech at a business in Rockville, Md., in which he equated House Republicans’ decision not to support a budget that would fund ObamaCare to disgruntled workers going on strike:

If you are working here and in the middle of the day you just stopped and said, ‘You know what? I want to get something, but I don’t know exactly what I’m going to get. I’m just going to stop working until I got something. I’m going to shut down the whole plant until I get something,’ you’d get fired, right? Because the deal is, you’ve already gotten hired. You’ve got a job. You are getting a paycheck. And so you also are getting the pride of doing a good job and contributing to a business and looking out for your co-workers. That is what you are getting. Well, it shouldn’t be any different for a member of Congress.

So basically, the president is saying House Republicans are like ungrateful workers who go on strike – and should all be fired. It would be interesting to hear what union officials, who have their own problems with ObamaCare, have to say about Obama’s approach to dealing with strikes.

In the real world, dealing with dissatisfied employees is nowhere near this simple. Workers have the right to form unions. And under the federal labor law, when a union is recognized managers are required to negotiate with the union in good faith before and even during a strike, until it is clear that there is an impasse, something that usually takes more than a couple of days. Only then is an employer allowed to hire replacement workers.

Saying “fire the whole lot of them” is easy; actually firing strikers is hard. Work stoppages have broken some pretty powerful politicians, including a certain former Obama administration chief of staff.

This comes in the midst of a government shutdown, with Republicans insisting on a delay in the implementation of ObamaCare in exchange for reopening nonessential government agencies. Up to now the administration has shown no interest in compromises, and has avoided any substantial talks over reopening federal agencies or suspending ObamaCare. But the president’s speech suggests a novel approach for Congressional Republicans: maybe they should formally vote in a union, then use the law to force him to negotiate with them at length.

Okay – Congress isn’t an ordinary company, so the comparison doesn’t really work either way. But Obama’s remarks reveal that the president really doesn’t understand how difficult it is to manage a workforce in the real world. That’s something that we should all keep in mind as we ponder the fate of ObamaCare.