The Employee Free Choice Act was introduced in Congress last week to the delight of the labor movement and to the chagrin of top CEOs of companies like Wal-Mart, government bailout recipients like Citgroup, and a host of pro-big business front groups with dubious names like the Workforce Fairness Institute.

Business owners organized the latter group and fund it through the US Chamber of Commerce mainly to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act. They claim that they oppose the Free Choice Act only because it would eliminate the secret ballot process for certifying a union, a process that Americans 'hold dear.'

At the Conservative Political Action Conference last month, Ernest Istook of the anti-union Heritage Foundation explained the right-wing's spin on the Employee Free Choice Act further. In a five minute interview with the conservative Talk Radio News, Istook couldn't bring himself to say the words Employee Free Choice Act but insisted, 'The concern is with every American who understands that the right to a secret ballot is about to be diminished by action of the US Congress, which is ready to pass legislation to restrict that right.'

Other right-wing entertainers from Rush Limbaugh to Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck have echoed this claim.

But the anti-union pundits, the corporate-backed Workforce Fairness Institute and the right-wing Heritage Foundation are wrong. The Employee Free Choice Act would not eliminate the secret ballot.

Federal labor law currently provides a choice between card check and a secret ballot process to certify a union. The law as it is now, however, gives that choice to the employer. Employers get to decide the process by which workers create their own organization.

To put it bluntly, CEOs at companies like Citigroup, Wal-Mart, AIG – some of whom are responsible for the economic and financial crisis our country is in – want to keep the power to determine how, when and which organizations you get to join.

Does that make any sense?

What the anti-union pundits won't say is that the Employee Free Choice Act simply changes the law to 1) create real penalties for employers who violate the law by threatening to fire pro-union workers; 2) eliminate red-tape to speed up the process by which unions are certified and contracts are negotiated; and, 3) let workers decide how they want to certify their own organization.

Mary Beth Maxwell, executive director of American Rights at Work, also helped to correct this common misperception about the bill in a recent teleconference with reporters. 'The Employer Free Choice Act will level the playing field by letting workers, not their bosses choose the process by which they form a union,' she said. 'The bill will toughen penalties on employers who violate the law, and it will help workers secure a contract in a timely manner.'

Maxwell also described the bill's broad and deep support both in Congress and the general public. 'There's incredible support for this with a majority in Congress. The President and the Vice President support this bill, and a majority of the American people support this bill,' she pointed out.

The hundreds of millions of dollars business groups have poured into a misinformation campaign and lobbying effort in Washington against the bill is a sign of their desperation, Maxwell explained. 'I don't think you would see this kind of mobilization of resources attacking the Employee Free Choice Act, except that we have such majority support and that we have such momentum,' the labor activist said. 'It's very clear that 2009 will be the year we pass the Employee Free Choice Act and restore the middle class.'

Supporters of the bill say its benefits go beyond protecting the right to join unions. As economist Lawrence Mishel, who directs the Economic Policy Institute, noted, this bill would strengthen the financial situation of working families and help correct some of the economic problems the country has fallen into.

Over the past 30 years, 'we've had productivity growth that has far exceeded the growth in the compensation, wages and benefits of the vast majority of workers,' Mishel argued.

In February, Mishel circulated a statement endorsing the Employee Free Choice Act, which has been signed by about four dozen economists, including three Nobel Prize winners, who have touted the role of unions in strengthening the economy.

'I think that these economists and many more believe that unions have a very positive effect on the economy, and they are going to be able to help us expand the benefits of economic growth to a wider array of people,' Mishel said.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich agreed with Mishel's assessment about the positive impact unions have on the economy in a separate press conference in February.

If unions had been stronger in the present period, we might have been able to avoid the severity of the economic crisis we face, Reich suggested. 'One big reason we are in the crisis we are in is that consumers have run out of money.

Consumer spending totals about 70 percent of the US economy, the former labor secretary continued. 'After the housing bubble burst, consumers were back to where they were before the housing bubble, which was not a happy place.'

Over the past eight years, median wages actually dropped. 'It's the first so-called recovery, at least up until 2007, we've had in the United States where median wages actually dropped,' Reich noted.

Reich argued that the drop in wages created a general lack of resources for working families to fall back onto when the financial crisis hit. That financial insecurity deepened the recession.

The main factor causing this decline in wages for working people, Reich added, was the decline in unionization. As unions shrank in size so did the rate at wages grew until the 2000s when they actually fell. 'Unions would have made a difference,' he said.

But if unionization helps boost wages and compensation, why aren't more workers joining unions? Public opinion polls show that workers in the tens of millions would join a union if they could.

'They are not unionizing,' Reich added, 'because they face a very hostile legal environment and are commonly intimidated by anti-union employers.' The Employee Free Choice Act would correct the situation, remove barriers to unionization, help workers bargain for better wages and benefits and rebuild demand back into the US economy to get it running again.

Lawyer and labor activist Beth Shulman, author of The Betrayal of Work, argues that unions help reduce income inequalities that pervade US society. 'At the end of the day, having a union, for millions of workers across this country really is the difference between having a decent wage and impoverishment, between having basic health care and doing without, between having a dignified retirement and being poor in your old age.'

The benefits of unionization spread beyond just workers and their families, but to whole communities, Shulman concluded.

A recent study published by the Center for American Progress Action Fund showed that union wages per hour are about 30 percent higher than non-union wages. In addition, union contracts close the gaps in wages between men and women, as well as racial and ethnic groups. Union members are also far more likely to have health benefits and pensions than non-union workers are.