Errol Louis of the New York Daily News predicts the impact of the Employee Free Choice Act in 2009:

As Barack Obama takes office, the single most important piece of legislation aimed at helping the middle class will be the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that makes it easier to unionize workplaces.

The law would correct an epidemic of workplace intimidation, much of it illegal, that’s unleashed when employees consider unionizing: 25% of the time, at least one worker gets fired for even proposing a union, and 51% of the time employers threaten to close a plant if workers approve a union.

That’s why an estimated 60 million nonunion workers say they’d like to join a union, but can’t – and why wages have been stagnant or falling since 2000.

If Obama wins passage of [the Employee Free Choice Act], tens of millions of people could start down the road to winning middle-class wages and benefits – exactly what’s needed to shorten the recession.

This is about as straightforward an argument for the passage of Employee Free Choice as I’ve seen expressed in a mainstream media outlet. Kudos to Louis for getting it.