The change a new law would make would turn what is now a private process into a public one.

Much has been written in the local news recently about proposed national changes to the way unions are formed.

Rep. Tom Allen has been attacked in TV ads by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for supporting these "card-check" changes. So what really gives here?

What is being proposed is analogous to the following: You are a member of your local school's parent-teacher organization. This parent-teacher organization is independent, but the state parent-teacher organization would like you to become one of its chapters.

That would mean trading your independence for the benefits and some extra costs of being part of a statewide organization.

At issue is the process by which your organization would decide whether to join. The state PTA organization wants to directly approach each of your members and ask them to sign a card signifying they would like to join the state organization.

Once they sign up more than 50 percent of your members this way, you would become part of the state organization. Your local governing group suggests that asking all members to vote by secret ballot after a period for public discussion of the pros and cons is the more appropriate way to proceed.

Which approach is more democratic?

I suspect most of you would choose the secret ballot. It is a common way that we, in a democracy, make significant voting choices.

So it may surprise you to learn that the "sign-a-card" approach is what organized labor is supporting to replace the current secret ballot process for organizing new unions.

They are proposing the approach in a law inappropriately titled "The Employee Free Choice Act of 2007."

Organized labor is fighting for relevance. Union membership has been steadily declining since the mid-1950s. Today organized labor makes up just 12 percent of the workforce.

However, it has not been lost on union leadership that up north in Canada, where card-check is much more widely applied, union membership is 32 percent of the workforce.

The national debate on this bill, which passed the House but not the Senate last year, has not been edifying.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce commercials are particularly heavy-handed and inappropriate. On the other hand, union leaders have rushed to characterize the current secret-ballot process as coercion by employers.

That's because it allows employers 30 days to "hold employee meetings" prior to a vote. Presumably union organizers have the same period to make their case.

In sum, what we have here is a simple case of power politics. Unions want a process more likely to get them a win. Employers want the greater flexibility that comes with a non-union work force.

The real question, often lost in the rhetoric, is what is best for the workers? I would argue that the fundamental reason for the decline of organized labor is that in most situations today workers get just as much, if not more, benefit from being non-union as union.

Labor relations law is so well-developed that workers have avenues to redress the abuses that were much of the original rationale for joining a union.

Moreover, nonunion employers in many industries pay a premium over union wage because they value the flexibility they retain in nonunion circumstances.

In addition, the increasingly global nature of many industries has greatly limited wage-negotiation flexibility.

Time and again union leadership has been short-sighted. Intent on preserving pay and benefits packages increasingly out of touch with the global market, they have ended up with the worst of all outcomes – widespread plant closings and layoffs. Given the current direction of markets and the current protections already built into the U.S. labor law, it is hard to see unions gaining more influence unless their gain is through political muscle.

The Employee Free Choice Act is not likely to improve the lot of U.S. workers, but it would improve the leverage of U.S. unions. It is the kind of law that politicians sponsor from time to time to please the proponents, figuring that it has little chance of being passed.

From my perspective as a Tom Allen supporter, it is hard to reconcile his support of this legislation with the more pragmatic and thoughtful positions he usually espouses.

I simply have to hope that, on closer examination, he sees the "Employee Free Choice Act" is anything but that.