When it comes to unions, there seems to be little middle ground. Americans either love them or hate them.

The good news for organized labor is, these days, more people love them.

A new survey by Peter D. Hart Research Associates shows that the public support of unions is at a 25-year high - 65 percent approve of unions while only 25 percent disapprove. More than half of all workers say they would join a union today, given the chance.

And why wouldn't they? It pays!

The U.S. Department of Labor reports that full-time wage and salary workers who were union members in 2006 had median weekly earnings of $833, compared with a median of $642 for those not represented by unions. Union members are also far more likely to have health and pension benefits. Plus, having a union contract means more job security.

In Washington state, more people are forming unions. The number of union members climbed 26,000 in 2006 to an estimated 549,000. The state's union membership rate is now 19.8 percent, up from 19.1 percent in 2005. With that increase, Washington now ranks 5th in the nation for unionization. Only Hawaii , New York , Alaska and New Jersey have higher rates.

That's the good news. Here's the bad.

The overall U.S. unionization rate declined to 12 percent in 2006 as membership dropped 326,000 to about 15.4 million. The national unionization rate has steadily declined from a high of 20.1 percent in 1983.

Analysts say last year's drop in unionization can be traced to the loss of traditionally unionized manufacturing jobs -- particularly in the automobile industry -- and the outsourcing of jobs, both overseas and from large unionized companies to smaller nonunion contractors.

That may explain the drop in numbers. But if Americans say they like unions and want to join them, why don't they? Why hasn't a new generation of union members in information technology, retail, service and other growing sectors replaced the previous generation?

There is growing evidence that the culprit is our antiquated, unenforced labor law, which employers have learned to evade, manipulate or ignore to prevent their employees from forming unions.

Americans are supposed to have the freedom of association. That freedom extends to the workplace, where we have the right to choose for ourselves whether we want a union. The law says it's illegal for employers to harass, intimidate or fire workers who support unionization.

Nice law. Shame it doesn't work.

About one in five union organizers can expect to be illegally fired as a result of their union activity, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

"Aggressive actions by employers -- often including illegal firings -- have significantly undermined the ability of U.S. workers to unionize their workplaces," says the study. "With the legal penalties for such actions being so slight, employers can break the law to head-off organizing efforts and face almost no real repercussions."

Since 2001, the National Labor Relations Board has tallied an average of about 1,400 workers per year who were illegally fired for supporting unionization. That's about one American worker fired every 90 minutes of every workday. And that's just the number of fired workers for whom the NLRB complaint and appeals process - which takes months, possibly even years - has been successfully pursued. There are many, many more who never seek or win redress.

To be sure, unions themselves are also to blame for the decline in membership rolls. Some unions have chosen to focus on retaining and servicing existing members when they should have dedicated more resources to organizing new members.

Plus, we've been slow to decry illegal employer harassment and firings. Let's face it. It's not exactly in labor's best interest to publicize the fact that workers face the loss of their livelihoods if they try to organize. "Union YES... If You Don't Get Fired!" isn't the best marketing program.

But union leaders have come to realize that the labor movement faces extinction unless we fight back and fix our broken labor laws. So to help restore workers' freedom to choose whether they want to unionize, we support the Employee Free Choice Act.

Rick Bender is president of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO.