In a truly amazing gaffe, President Obama said Thursday that workers should not have the right to go on strike from their jobs. The comments were made in a speech at a Rockville, Md., business while attacking Republicans over the government shutdown.
Obama scolded the Republicans for refusing to do the work they were sent to Washington to do. He then compared them to workers who refused to show up for work, arguing that they would be deservedly fired. He said:
The comments received applause and cheers from the audience.
The president, a former constitutional law lecturer, apparently did not grasp that what he was describing was a classic organized labor strike, long a federally protected action and a cornerstone of both workers’ rights and the progressive movement.
The rights were first codified into law in the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, one of most significant bills passed during President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. As the Department of Labor’s official “Employee Rights under the National Labor Relations Act” poster states, employees have the right to “Strike and picket, depending on the purpose or means of the strike or the picketing.”
