Despite this interest, small businesses may chafe at the plan. Micro-businesses (firms with fewer than 20 employees) would likely be left out, says Dean Baker, a co-director at the nonpartisan Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. “Presumably, you would want to aid firms other than ones that employ close friends and family members,” he says. “Having a certain size minimum makes it more difficult to come up with some scam.”

Fewer than 13 percent of workers in the U.S. today belong to a labor union, a statistic that anti-union forces will point to as evidence that unions are relics of the past, and no longer appeal to most Americans.

But a new report from Cornell University suggests another, darker reason for the steep decline in union membership in recent generations: the aggressive, often illegal tactics used by employers determined to keep their companies union-free.

“[T]he overwhelming majority of U.S. employers are willing to use a broad arsenal of legal and illegal tactics to interfere with the rights of workers to organize, and … they do so with near impunity,” writes author Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell.

I don’t think the labor movement doubts Obama’s support in principle. Unlike the Clintons, who were never comfortable with labor and only became pro-labor as a matter of convenience, he has been a union supporter his entire career. No one doubts his support of EFCA. But I think for Obama the question is, where in his priority list is this?

When private employers fight against unionization, they often do so with tactics that are illegal or barely legal.

Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University, has found in her most recent research that “employer opposition has steadily increased,” including in “intensiveness and aggressiveness,” such as firing union supporters.

Employer opposition takes its toll, as workers fear for their jobs or economic wellbeing. In the face of employer hostility and long, drawn-out campaigns for union recognition, workers grow cynical or disillusioned, persuaded that collective action is futile, even if they would like a union.