As Lewis Carroll once had Alice in Wonderland say, "It gets curiouser and curiouser."

A pro-union bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday is a mirror image of the one vetoed by Gov. Bill Ritter three weeks ago. The White House already has said that if the bill makes it as far as President Bush's desk, he will veto it, too.

As they say, politics makes strange bedfellows. And as a prominent economic development official wrote me Thursday, "I didn't think I'd ever say these words again: 'Thank God, George Bush is president.' "

In D.C., they're calling it the Employee Free Choice Act, a title that conservative Washington Post columnist George Will called "Orwellian." The bill, which prevailed in the new Democratic- controlled Congress, removes the right of employers to demand secret-ballot elections by workers before unions could be recognized. If the bill became law, a union would be certified once a majority of workers signed authorization cards, a fairly public process.

Today, if a majority of employees signs such cards, employers can require a secret-ballot election, which is conducted by the National Labor Relations Board. The federal legislation and the Colorado bill that was vetoed both attempt to eliminate that second step, making it easier for workplaces to become unionized.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls the federal legislation "the most important labor law reform legislation of this generation. It is about basic labor rights, about the rule of the majority free from intimidation and about protecting jobs."

House Republican leader John Boehner said it was more about "taking care of union bosses. . . . This is an effort to help them get more members, to make it easier for them to sign them up and to intimidate them to sign cards."

The unions say employers intimidate employees during the period prior to the second election. Employers say union activists are the ones who intimate employees. Sounds like a basic political campaign to me, one side maligning the other. The important thing is that, once all is said and done, employees are able to vote their conscience secretly, without anyone finding out how they voted.

California Democrat George Miller, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said Thursday, "In many places, when you exercise your right to organize, you get fired, you get intimidated, you get harassed, you get followed home."

His fellow Californian on the committee, its ranking Republican, Buck McKeon, says, "After 200-plus years of our American democracy, it is breathtaking to see the right to a secret ballot rejected so flatly and so strongly."

The Employee Free Choice Act did not pass the House with enough votes to override a veto. Now it goes to the Senate, where it faces a tougher fight. With the White House promising a Bush veto, its prospects for becoming law appear dim.

The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and Colorado Concern, a bipartisan organization of 100 Colorado executives, sent a letter to the state's D.C. delegation on Thursday. In part, it read, "We believe that the current process outlined by the National Labor Relations Act . . . is the most fair and efficient way for private-sector workers to join or form a labor union or collective bargaining unit. A secret ballot ensures that employees are able to cast their vote confidentially, without pressure from either union organizers or employers."

Much has been made of the fact that union membership has dropped from 20 percent of the work force in 1983 to 12 percent in 2006. If you eliminate government workers and teachers, you're left with 7.4 percent.

I don't pretend to know why union membership is on the decline. I do know the two-step union certification process has been law since the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 and that union membership peaked while it was in place. As such, it's hard for me to imagine that the secret ballot is a culprit here. In fact, it's the only thing that makes real intimidation impossible.

Business editor Rob Reuteman can be reached at 303-954-5177 or reutemanr@RockyMountainNews.com.