Your recent editorial on the Employee Free Choice Act is a gross mischaracterization of this new workers' rights legislation. In fact, this bill restores workers' choice to bargain with their employer for a better life.

America's middle class is shrinking fast. Wages remain stagnant, personal debt is skyrocketing and health care costs are out of control. Meanwhile, Georgia's unemployment rate rose to 7 percent last month, the highest level in 16 years.

That means as the holidays approach, nearly 350,000 Georgians are out of work and don't know how they're going to pay their mortgages, cover their heating bills or even put food on the table.

A union contract is the best economic uplift program for working people in our nation's history. Workers who belong to unions earn 30 percent more than those who don't and are much more likely to have employer-provided health coverage and pensions. It's no wonder more than half of U.S. workers - nearly 60 million - say they would join a union right now if they could.

Unfortunately, too few ever get that chance. Every day, corporations deny employees the freedom to decide for themselves whether to form unions. In fact, one out of five union activists are likely to be fired when they try to form unions, according to a new study by the Center for Economic Policy Research.

The Employee Free Choice Act wouldn't eliminate union elections. If workers want an election, they can still have one. It simply puts the choice on how to elect a union---by card or ballot---into workers' hands, not those of employers.

Approved by the House, the bipartisan Employee Free Choice Act would go a long way to protect workers trying to form unions. That's why it's the most important improvement in employment law in many decades.

Joe Ellis, President, Augusta Central Labor Council, Martinez