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To paraphrase what Winston Churchill once said about democracy, the Employee Free Choice Act is the worst alternative except for all of the other options.

The EFCA is co-sponsored by both New Jersey senators and 10 of its 13 House members, including Republicans Chris Smith and Frank LoBiondo. The bill, which is backed by the Obama Administration, would require an employer to recognize a union once a majority of the employees in the bargaining unit had signed up. That's right, no secret ballot election -- as the Chamber of Commerce and the business community keep reminding us with an onslaught of media advertising.

How undemocratic!

But as the renowned Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once reminded us, the life of the law is not logic, but experience. And experience has demonstrated over the past many years, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which allegedly guarantees workers the right to organize unions, is irretrievably broken.

I speak with some personal experience in such matters. I spent the 95th Congress (1977-78) as special counsel first to the House labor-management committee and then the Senate labor committee.

What was even then apparent to any open-minded observer was that national labor law was nothing but a hunting license for employers to prevent union organizing. All they had to do was harass union organizers, fire union supporters and drag out elections forever, all with the help of highly paid and skillful anti-labor consultants.

Of course, those tactics were all illegal, and eventually the employers would pay fines, sometimes even large fines, but that was small change compared with having to sign a union contract. They might even have to rehire some of their fired employees years down the road, but by then the wind had been removed from the sails of the organizing drive.

In a previous incarnation, I even had some experience of my own with this sort of union busting. As a journalist, I had once led a campaign to organize the editorial department of my newspaper into the American Newspaper Guild. Before the vote, I was fired for moonlighting. Of course, all of the reporters moonlighted, but I was the only one fired, and I was held up by management as an example of what would happen to other staffers who stuck their necks out. The union drive was quickly deflated.

My job in the 95th Congress was to help draft and pass a Labor Law Reform bill. Its provisions would have prevented employers from delaying elections, put real teeth into the NLRA, and created a level playing field for union campaigners.

The bill was passed overwhelmingly in the House and went to the Senate in June, 1978. I spent the next six weeks on the floor of the Senate trying to help the Democratic leadership and the American trade union movement bring the bill to a vote in the face of a Republican/Dixiecrat filibuster. In the end, we could only muster 59 of the 100 Senators to support the bill. The 41-member minority prevailed, and the bill died.

Did someone say undemocratic?

The consequence has been catastrophic for the United States and the labor movement. The percentage of unionized workers in private industry has steadily declined, and as an inevitable corollary, the real wages of all workers in our country, union and non-union, have steadily receded.

The National Labor Relations Act, a major component of FDR's New Deal, by permitting union organization of major U.S. industries, provided an important stimulus to the economy in the late 1930s and post World War II era. That was before employers discovered the many tactics to avoid the law. Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act could again provide a stimulus to the economy as the nation struggles to emerge from its current financial crisis.

Frank Askin is distinguished professor of law and Robert Knowlton scholar at Rutgers School of Law-Newark. He is the author of "Defending Rights: a Life in Law & Politics" (Prometheus Press).