A new report card on the state of the US workforce finds that more of us are struggling to find full-time work, pay for health care and manage our debts. Meanwhile union and business advocates are drawing battle lines over a proposed new law that would change the way workers decide whether to unionize. The new law is so important that one expert says it could "decide the future of organized labor in the United States."

The new National Labor Scorecard (.pdf) from from Rutgers University School of Management distills information from a variety of sources to create a snapshot of worker wellbeing. A press release accompany the study highlights some of the challenges:

• Today, more than 10 percent of Americans are unemployed, discouraged from seeking work, or underemployed, a nearly 25-percent increase (24.2 percent) from one year earlier.
• More than a half million Americans (530,000) have been subject to mass layoffs in the last year, a growth of nearly 5 percent, but a lower rate than five and 10 years ago.
• Over the last eight years, the percent of workers who are working part time who would prefer to be in full-time jobs has gone up over 72 percent.
• The percentage of Americans working more than 48 hours/week has been steadily declining, to the latest figure of 17.8 percent.
• Unemployment rates are highest for blacks and Hispanics/Latinos, and their increases in the past year have been greater than the increases for whites.

There's more dour news, but one bright spot is that workplace safety has imporved.

In the face of these challenges, labor advoates are pushing for the Employee Free Choice Act which allows workers to choose a union if a majority of workers sign a petition that is validated by the National Labor Relations board. It strengthens penalties for employers who penalize pro-union workers, and provides for mediatiion and arbitration if a collective bargaining agreement can't be reached within a specified time period.

According to Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic Policy Research, because union membership has declined over the last 30 years, real wages have essentially stagnated. The reason for that decline, he maintains, is that, "[T]he rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively have been sharply curtailed over the last three decades."

The EFCA passed the House of Representatives last year, and advocates are pushing for Senate passage when the fall recess ends. Expect intense lobbying on both sides of the issue in the coming months, with each side accusing the other or distorting what the law would actually do.

Advocates launched a new TV ad during the Democratic National Convention:

Beth is one blogger argues that the law is essentil to protecting the middle class:

The system for bargaining with employers and forming unions — that
strengthened working families and helped build the middle class — has
been intentionally broken. Now, we have a chance to fix it.

However,opponents say the law hurts workers and business owners by depriving them of the right to a secret ballot during a union authorization vote. The National Federation of Independent Businesses says the new law would subject workers to union intimidation, and the collective bargaining provisions will drive some employers out of business. NFIB is part of a group that also launched an ad campaign during the DNC:

BlogHer community member hrwench hasn't decided how she feels about EFCA, but she sees one piece of misinformation that needs correcting:

What I have decided is that I'm tired of anti-EFCA folks saying the
proposed EFCA will "take away an employee's right to a confidential
vote."

I have some news: in the case of voting for or against a union, you don't currently have the legal right to a confidential vote.

Read the whole post to find out more.

One unlikely opponent of the bill is retired Sen. George McGovern, who carried the standard for the Democrats in the 1972 presidential election. In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece last month, he argued:

To my friends supporting EFCA I say this: We cannot be a party that
strips working Americans of the right to a secret-ballot election. We
are the party that has always defended the rights of the working class.
To fail to ensure the right to vote free of intimidation and coercion
from all sides would be a betrayal of what we have always championed.

In a Labor Day message posted to the AFL-CIO website, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama promised that he would sign EFCA if he is elected. Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton are co-sponsors of the Senate version of the bill. I haven't found a statement on the issue from presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, but he is not on the list of co-sponsor. However, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, one of his key supporters, is on the co-sponsor list.

But it's Sen. McCain's chosen running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who leads Matt Bodie at PrawfsBlog to raise the question I've been wondering about:

The real question, in my view, is whether policy will follow rhetoric.
Will McCain-Palin advocate for greater restrictions on trade? Will
they adopt a more restrictive position on immigration policy, or will
they drift back towards McCain's more pro-immigration views? And given
that Palin is a former union member, and her husband is a Steelworker,
will they support the Employee Free Choice Act?