The Times bacs the Employee Free Choice Act

The bill’s opponents charge that replacing secret ballots with the majority signup would be undemocratic. But the current system is by no means fair. The law prohibits union advocacy by employees during work hours and allows employers to ban organizers from the work place. But employers can require workers to attend anti-union presentations, and can discipline or fire those who refuse to attend.

In 2005, according to the most recent annual report of the National Labor Relations Board, 31,358 employees were receiving back pay after being discriminated against for their union-related activities. In research for a bipartisan Congressional commission in 2000, Kate Bronfenbrenner, a labor relations professor at Cornell University, reported that 25 percent of employers illegally fired at least one employee during organizing campaigns.

Labor unions have a role to play in helping to fix today’s economic ills — most notably, worsening income inequality, a problem that’s caused in part by unions’ decline and the workers’ resulting lack of bargaining power. What’s needed is a Congressional drive to help Mr. Bush see this obvious connection. The Senate should take up the House bill promptly and send it to the president for his signature.