Bargaining at a tilted table

But what happened in San Diego is nothing compared to what happened to workers in Jacksonville, Texas, just the day before. Back in 2000, the employees of a small meat-cutting department at a Jacksonville Wal-Mart voted to unionize. A week later, Wal-Mart announced that it was phasing out in-store meat-cutting departments nationwide. It took six years for the NLRB to conclude that Wal-Mart had unlawfully retaliated against workers trying to unionize. Even then, the board disregarded the ruling of its own administrative law judge and decided that, even though Wal-Mart violated the law, it can't be ordered to restore the unionized meat department.

These are just the latest among dozens of anti-worker NLRB decisions in recent years. The cumulative effect has been devastating, particularly in a global economy in which workers' rights are being eroded in the face of lowest-common-denominator labor conditions in places such as China and India.

A nationwide study by the University of Illinois at Chicago found that:

* 30% of employers fire pro-union workers.

* 49% threaten to close a work site when workers try to unionize.

* 82% hire consultants to fight union-organizing drives.

* 91% force employees to attend anti-union meetings with supervisors.

"Our research clearly shows that firings, bribes and threats are pervasive," said Nik Theodore, director of the university's Center for Urban Economic Development. "These actions greatly impede workers' ability to form unions."

In 1935, when Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act, it held the philosophy that protecting the right to organize helped to restore "equality of bargaining power between employers and employees" and even to remove "sources of industrial strife" and to "safeguard commerce" from injury. Congress clearly saw workers' rights as good for the overall economy. Today, however, the Republican-dominated and anti-worker NLRB is motivated by a much different philosophy.

Congress could begin rectifying the situation by passing the Employee Free Choice Act, which already has 215 co-sponsors in the House and 43 in the Senate, perhaps more once Democrats take control of Congress in January. The act would make it less difficult to form a union and authorize stronger penalties for retaliation against workers seeking to unionize.

Democratic congressional leaders need to recognize that many hardworking Americans haven't received their fair share of the recent economic recovery. It's time to change the rules so that the economy works for all of us instead of some of us.