This statement is taken in whole from the Federalist Society website with their permission. The full debate can be viewed at their site here: http://www.fed-soc.org/debates/

The evidence is overwhelming that America’s basic labor law is
broken and fails to allow workers to exercise their fundamental human
right to join a union and enjoy the benefits of collective bargaining
without fear of employer reprisal, unreasonable delay, and the
unfortunately very real risk of being fired.

Today over 50 million workers would join a union but face significant employer
resistance. Three fourths of employers hire anti-union consultants to
fight workers’ efforts to organize. Nearly 30,000 workers are fired
illegally for supporting unions each year. Under current law, workers
are able to achieve the benefits of a collective bargaining agreement
in only one out of every five efforts to form a union. If the employer
resists to the point where an unfair labor practice is filed, this
number falls to about one in ten. Workers can’t even get to an election
in one third of the cases where unions submit the showing of interest
required by current law. This number goes down by another 25 percent
when an unfair labor practice charge is involved. Even when unions win
an election, workers realize the benefits of a collective bargaining
agreement in only about 60 percent of cases and this percentage falls
by another 13 percent when unfair labor practice charges are involved.

Because each step of the process is broken, we need a systematic solution
that restores workers’ fundamental rights by addressing the problems in
each stage of the organizing and initial contract process.

The Employee Free Choice Act does this. Increased penalties will deter
employers from violating the law, recognition on the basis of majority
card check will assure access to collective bargaining once a majority
indicates this is their preference, and the availability of arbitration
will assure that a fair agreement will be reached in a timely fashion.

While the Employee Free Choice Act is needed to restore American workers’
human rights, three large bodies of research demonstrate why it is also
essential to putting the country back on the path to sustainable
economic recovery and shared prosperity.

Unions are historically the most consistent institutions for achieving gradual improvements in
worker wages and for reducing income inequality within and across
industries and occupations. Enacting the National Labor Relations Act
as part of the New Deal laid the foundation for what became known as
the post war “social contract.” From the mid-1940s through the 1970s
wages grew roughly in tandem with productivity growth. As management
opposition to unions increased and union membership declined
precipitously after 1980, this social contract broke down. Productivity
grew but the wages of ordinary workers stagnated while corporate
profits and CEO pay skyrocketed and income inequality worsened.
Restoring workers’ ability to organize is the first step in getting
wages and productivity moving together again and gradually but surely
rebuilding the middle class and extending its promise to low wage
workers and their families.

Another large body of research has demonstrated that major investments
like those about to be made in infrastructure, renewable energy,
health care, and other areas will realize their full return only if combined with
workplace relationships that foster worker engagement, teamwork, coordination, and
labor-management partnerships. These innovative workplace practices and
the improvements in productivity and service quality they generate
cannot be achieved if, as is the case today, conflicts, tensions, and
resistance dominate the collective bargaining process. Fixing the basic
labor law and following up with industry-specific initiatives to put
these innovative practices to work are essential to getting the full
return on the investment of these public resources and building the
21st century labor management relationships workers want and the
economy needs.

A third stream of research shows that many of the
core workplace standards in the US from health and safety laws to
family medical leave are fully implemented only in workplaces where
there are unions. Workplaces with unions foster innovative methods that
ensure that public policies like improving health and safety are
achieved in ways that both improve conditions and make firms
competitive. Once the basic labor law is fixed, government regulators
can work with progressive employers and unions in new, more flexible
ways to achieve the joint gains in performance and employment standards
we know are possible.

It is time to replace the divisive
ideological debate over labor law with a focus on the evidence that the
law is broken and with the recognition that the country needs business
and labor to work together for the common good. Passage of the Employee
Free Choice Act is the essential first step. It will restore balance
and fairness at work, give more workers a chance to form unions and get
better health care, job security, and benefits and an opportunity to
pursue the American Dream for themselves and their families. And it
will once again show that labor and management can rise to the occasion
in a time of national crisis.