I’ve finally figured Obama out

Reading this recent article about Obama and the Highway a trust Fund, I have finally come to understand his MO.

President Barack Obama openly mocked Congress on Tuesday for failing to fix the looming shortfall in the federal Highway Trust Fund — and took some shots at House Speaker John Boehner’s threats to sue him for overstepping his powers.

“I haven’t heard a good reason for why they haven’t acted,” Obama said of the lawmakers in a speech in front of the Key Bridge, which connects Washington to Arlington, Virginia. “It’s not like they’re busy with other stuff.”

The mockery was reminiscent of the all-out sarcasm the president has used lately to attack congressional Republicans’ attitudes toward climate change, but this time he turned it to another of his perennial themes: boosting infrastructure spending to create jobs.

Think of it as labor negotiations. If you have never participated in negotiations this may not be easy, but stay with me.

When I first got involved in labor negotiations forty years ago, the situation was toxic. Neither side trusted the other. Management held the unions in distain and baited them unnecessarily. The unions were uncooperative and obstinate because they could not get information they wanted and did not trust the information they did get … and rightly so. Being rather naive at the time, I just didn’t get it. I was supposed to be management, but could not understand why we couldn’t just be honest. Several times we ended up in strikes for no good reason. Most of the time the key issues were employee benefits and then wages.

Management and union leadership were out to prove something for themselves and the negative impact on the workers was ignored.

As I gradually gained more authority over the years and was actually allowed to talk to the unions at the bargaining table, I tried my own tactics. When the unions asked for data on health care costs, claims expenses, etc. I opened the books and gave it to them. When they had complaints about claim processing I brought in the administrators and let the unions ask them questions directly. When they complained about rebate checks the company got from an insurer, I offered to share the rebate with employees as long as they would share the extra premium payment required in bad experience years (they declined the offer).

When we faced a major issue costing the company fifty million dollars over several years and penalizing retired employees, we worked on solutions with all of the unions at the table at once. We exchanged ideas, we explained how it all worked. We all new our target was saving $50,000,000 so we put a list together showing possibilities and combinations for saving that money. We told the unions the company didn’t care how it was saved and then left the room so the unions could craft the set of changes they could live with. In the end they accepted some of our ideas and had some better ideas that worked as well. The problem was solved.

We did not bad mouth each other, we did not play games with each other. Oh there were times of yelling and accusing and frustration trying to explain and understand each other but that was kept in the room.

We wanted to solve the problem and look good to my management, but we didn’t want to simply screw the employees and neither did anyone else. The unions for their part wanted to protect their members, but understood the realities of the problems and took a long-term view of the alternative solutions.

All this didn’t happen over night. The entire process of building mutual respect took years. It all didn’t happen at the bargaining table or even was it known by all parties. We had lunches with key people, we met privately with others, we crafted specific communications for employees explaining the issues we all faced. We occasionally played golf. We set up a committee to just talk about employee benefit issues between and outside of labor negotiations. That committee has been in effect and operating for over twenty-five years with participants coming and going over the years.

Now compare this to our President who sinks to the level of those he opposes. Who continues to publicly bate Republicans (the union in this analogy). Who thinks the bully pulpit is the best way to smash the opposition. Who places ideology over compromise. Clearly this is a two way street and Republicans (union) need to compromise as well, but just as in my example, first you need trust and then you need good reasons to change and then you need mutual rewards for changing. All that is the responsibility of the leader wanting to improve things and it starts with winning the confidence of the leaders of the opposition.