In an editorial for the Los Angeles Times today, former US Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich gives his advice on how we can reverse this deepening recession and give middle class Americans the greatest opportunity for a better life.

Like economist Paul Krugman, Reich also suggests that we can strengthen our economy through the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for Americans to form unions. Unions, he says, would "give the middle class the bargaining power it needs for better wages and benefits," which "necessary if our economy is to succeed."

"The sooner (the Employee Free Choice Act is) enacted, the better," he says, "for U.S. workers and for the U.S. economy."

Reich goes on to explain this by asking his readers to look back 50 years ago, when "middle class was expanding and the economy was soaring." He argues that salaries provided us with the means to buy goods and services we produced. "Good pay meant more purchases," he argues, "and more purchases meant more jobs."

How were we able to achieve this? Unions. In 1955, he states, "more than a third of working Americans belonged to one," which gave them the leverage they required to get the paychecks that America needed. And for those that weren't unionized, they, too, benefitted from unions, as "wage agreements spilled over to nonunionized workplaces as well."

Reich argues that the same solution would apply to boost today's economy. Citing a statistic from the Department of Labor, workers in unions "earn 30% higher wages" and "are 59% more likely to have employer-provided health insurance than their nonunion counterparts."

However, there are barriers to forming unions. Reich explains:

"Although America and its economy need unions, it's become nearly impossible for employees to form one. The Hart poll I cited tells us that 57 million workers would want to be in a union if they could have one. But those who try to form a union, according to researchers at MIT, have only about a 1 in 5 chance of successfully doing so."

"The reason? Most of the time, employees who want to form a union are threatened and intimidated by their employers. And all too often, if they don't heed the warnings, they're fired, even though that's illegal."

Read the full opinion piece by clicking here.