Ariella Bernstein is a Democrat.  From 2003 to 2006, she was deputy director of public affairs at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS).  For the thirteen years preceding that, she was a field investigator and supervisor for the National Labor Relations Board -- serving during Republican and Democrat administrations.  With at least 16 years of experience working on behalf of workers' rights at federal agencies, Ms. Bernstein unabashedly proclaims:  "No worker should be fired for supporting a union, nor should employers unlawfully evade their duty to bargain."  And she has dedicated a sizeable portion of her professional life to enforcing the law to that end.

Yet, Ms. Bernstein's opinion of EFCA:  "...the jury is out as to whether the Employee Free Choice Act is the only answer. Let's take a closer look first."

In today's WSJ, Ms. Bernstein cautions against the political rush to pass EFCA, arguing that the factual underpinnings on which the bill is supposedly based have not been thoroughly examined.  In addition to a lack of objective analysis of all the relevant facts and data available, Ms. Bernstein fears that the haste with which EFCA may be pursued will preclude serious assessment of all the bill's potential consequences:

Equally important are the practical difficulties EFCA might present. When contract terms are imposed, it absolves the parties of their responsibility to compromise, a critical component of labor-management relations. Conflict resolution professionals rightfully claim that parties to a contract must have "buy in"; they must be part of a joint conciliatory process when reaching terms of a contract that governs their relationship.

And what about the cost of EFCA to Main Street employers, already under pressure in this economy? With companies struggling to survive and the credit markets tightening, passing this bill does not guarantee widespread unionized employment or wage increases.

Case in point: In Canada, after an arbitrator imposed the terms of a contract last month, Wal-Mart was forced to close one of its facilities because of higher costs. Arbitration does not always help employees.

But why listen to Ms. Bernstein?  She's only someone who has dedicated her career to the study and enforcement of collective employee rights; who likely knows the practice and procedures of federal labor agencies backward and forward; who probably forgets more about traditional labor law each day than most members of Congress know.  Why aren't voices like hers being heard more often during the debate over EFCA and labor law reform?

We asked that question a year-and-a-half ago.

Senator Arlen Specter asked it this past summer.

Perhaps now that the threat of the filibuster looks diminished by the day, cooler heads will realize that there are many insightful and disinterested viewpoints valuable to any legitimate approach to labor law reform.  It would be a disgrace, instead, to railroad through a seriously flawed political payback measure like EFCA as it is currently written.