Working families need secure jobs, health and retirement benefits and fair wages. Whatever else we do to help the economy, it won't result in broadly shared, lasting prosperity unless we also restore workers' freedom to bargain with their employers for a better life by enacting the Employee Free Choice Act.

In these perilous economic times, we must restore workers' freedom to bargain for secure jobs, health care and retirement benefits and fair pay. It's time to rebuild the middle class and help struggling working families. The Employee Free Choice Act will restore that freedom and help us rebuild the middle class.

We need the Employee Free Choice Act because the current system for forming unions and bargaining is broken beyond repair.

Corporations routinely harass, intimidate, coerce and fire workers just because they want the freedom to bargain for a better life--and even if companies get caught, they get little more than a slap on the wrist. This is counter to the intent of U.S. laws and must be changed by enacting the Employee Free Choice Act.

Every day, corporations harass, intimidate or fire working people who try to form unions so they can bargain for a better life. Even when workers form a union, more than 40 percent of the time they can't get contracts. Penalties for companies that break the law are so minimal that they're just a cost of doing business. We must restore workers' freedom to form unions and bargain by passing the Employee Free Choice Act.

- Yolanda Solis, St. John