By MARK S. MACKENZIE

While the few at the top of the economic ladder are pocketing record profits, New Hampshire's working families have been left behind. America's once-powerful middle class is shrinking rapidly as wages fall, health-care costs rise and retirement security has all but disappeared.

One of the primary reasons working people are getting left behind is that they've lost the ability to bargain with their employer for better wages and benefits through unions. The laws covering how workers form unions are broken - gamed by corporations and not updated in 70 years. That's bad, because people who have a union earn on average 30 percent more than workers who don't have a union, according to government statistics, and they are much more likely to have health care and pensions.

In fact, unions are still the best support our nation has for our dwindling middle class. More than half of U.S. workers - nearly 60 million - say they would join a union right now if they could. But too few people ever get the chance.

Every day, corporations deny employees the freedom to decide for themselves whether to form unions to bargain for a better life. They routinely intimidate, harass, coerce and even fire people who try to organize unions, and our nation's labor laws are powerless to stop them. According to recent academic studies, three-quarters of companies make workers undergo intimidating one-on-one meeting where they are personally urged by employers to oppose the union.

A quarter of private sector employers fire at least one worker during a union organizing campaign, and our nation's labor laws are powerless to stop them. In many cases by the time employees vote in a National Labor Relations Board-sponsored election, the waters have been tainted, and free and fair choice isn't an option for workers. That is why the Employee Free Choice Act is so important. It calls for stiff penalties for companies that harass or intimidate employees and it would ensure that workers had a fair shake at a first contract with their employer.

The Employee Free Choice Act would also remove barriers to workers who want to form a union when a majority of employees sign union authorization cards, a process called majority signup.

Contrary to recent distortions by out-of-state corporate lobbyists and Big Business, workers are still entitled to a secret ballot election under the Employee Free Choice Act. The Employee Free Choice Act simply gives workers - not corporations - the power to decide how they will choose to form a union.

The NLRB, federal courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court have long recognized majority signup, but the power to recognize workers' choice remains in the company's hands. In New Hampshire, AT&T call center workers won union representation through this system. Still, most corporations deliberately block workers from joining a union and aren't about to agree to a level playing field.

We need to change a system that fails so many. Rising gas prices, shrinking paychecks and a sinking economy are battering working families. That's why we need the Employee Free Choice Act more than ever. It puts the freedom about whether to form a union back in the hands of workers and would offer new hope to the millions of workers seeking a better lives for themselves and their families.

(Mark S. MacKenzie is president of the New Hampshire AFL-CIO.)