Yesterday, in a landmark decision, the Supreme Court upheld state “paycheck protection” laws in states such as Washington and Michigan that require unions to seek workers’ permission before spending funds for political purposes.

But, although unions won’t be able to take workers’ money for political campaigning, they’re after something even more important — workers’ right to privacy.

Americans take the right to privacy in the voting booth for granted. If New York suddenly required that someone watch over your shoulder while you voted, supposedly to avoid intimidation, New Yorkers would be outraged. So would any other American.

The Soviet Union, before its unlamented demise, proclaimed that it held fair and open elections. But only one candidate, the party’s candidate, ran. No one dared vote “nyet” because the local politburo watched each voter to make sure that malcontents would not be around to vote in the next election. This Orwellian watching of how others vote belongs and should remain on the dust heap of history.

How strange it is that 47 senators, themselves elected in the privacy of the voting booth, would seek to deny such a basic right to the American worker. These senators, including New York’s Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, have received extraordinarily bad advice.

On Monday, the Senate will begin to debate the union backed “Employee Free Choice Act of 2007.” No doubt, puppet legislators in Cuba or North Korea have passed legislation with similar misleading titles to mask repressive legislation to deny workers such common dignities as a secret ballot to choose or reject a union.

The bill has nothing to do with employee free choice other than to deprive workers of it. The only truthful part of the bill’s title is that many in this Congress plan to pass it in 2007.

This misnamed bill would change current law and would allow workplaces to be unionized without secret ballots. A vote on the bill could come as early as Wednesday, and the president has promised a veto if the bill passes.

Under the Employee Free Choice Act, a workplace could be unionized if a majority of workers in a bargaining unit sign a card in favor of unionization — a process known as “card check.” The card is a form of petition, the signatures on which may be voluntarily given, or coerced by union organizers.

Petitions are often used in America as a threshold for getting a candidate or an issue on a ballot. Then Americans rely on secret ballots to reveal the true judgments of the public. No one would believe a petition by itself without a private vote would be sufficient to elect a senator or change a law or establish a union.

A bill with the same language passed the House of Representatives on March 1 by a margin of 241 to 185. HR 800 was sponsored by a California Democrat, George Miller — the same George Miller who, on a visit to Mexico with 15 colleagues in August, 2001, wrote a letter to the Junta Local de Conciliacion y Arbitraje del Estado de Pueblo that said, “we feel that the secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose.”

According to Senator Clinton, the Employee Free Choice Act “would create a fair and level playing field between workers and employers and promote the economic growth of the American middle class.” She argues that employers scare workers into voting against unionization, and hence that open voting is needed to reduce intimidation. This illogical argument comes straight out of labor’s playbook.

Why Mrs. Clinton believes there would be less intimidation with open cards than with private voting is profoundly puzzling. Surely the most level playing field occurs when no one knows anyone’s votes.

Further, allowing unions to organize workplaces through intimidation could hurt the middle class, rather than help it, as negotiated compensation packages force firms to close or relocate offshore. The heavily unionized rustbelt has been shedding jobs. And the greatest job growth in the country has been in the non-unionized areas of the South, where plants such as South Carolina’s BMW and Tennessee’s Nissan are adding employment.

The bill would dramatically increase punitive damages on employers who intimidate workers, and would require that charges against employers be given priority in the courts. Employers would be required to pay workers’ back pay, as well as damages equivalent to two times their back pay. If employers were proved to have intimidated workers or interfered with elections, they would be fined up to $20,000 for each violation.

In addition to the loss of the secret ballot and increased penalties, the bill would subject both parties to binding arbitration over pay if, 120 days after a union is declared a certified bargaining agent, the firm and the union cannot agree. Both parties would be required to keep to the wages for two years.

Setting salaries by legislative fiat has many negative consequences, both for firms and workers. When workers did not think compensation was high enough, they could quit and go to other firms and the company would not be able to raise wages to attract other workers. If employers thought the levels were too high, they could not lower them and even might have to declare bankruptcy and close down the plant.

If the choice of whether to join a union can be made by checking a card, perhaps that is how we should also choose our elected senators and representatives. What is good enough for unions should be good enough for Congress.

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.