John Pezzana maintains and updates cable Internet and telephone signals for Comcast in Pittsburgh. Three years ago, John and a strong majority of his co-workers first voted to form a union, and yet they are still without a first contract.

John and his co-workers formed a union to ensure job security, to maintain affordable health care and to have policies written down in the form of a contract agreement. But when negotiations started, the company dragged its feet, constantly changing lawyers, canceling appointments, refusing to meet regularly, taking exorbitant amounts of time on minor proposals such as the preamble and quibbling over every minor detail.

Stalling at the bargaining table is just one of the tactics employers use to prevent workers from exercising their right to form unions. Employers systematically thwart workers' efforts through intimidation, coercion, delays and even unlawfully firing workers, according to Cornell University's Kate Bronfenbrenner. In fact, a quarter of employers in the private sector illegally fire one or more workers when they try to form a union.

These violations are so rampant that internationally recognized human rights organization Human Rights Watch has called the denial of workers' freedom to form unions in the United States a fundamental human rights issue.

These types of delay-and-stall tactics make workers feel powerless and demoralized when they see that their efforts to come together and form a union are in vain. Such frustration predictably leads to efforts to get rid of the union.

That's what happened in Pittsburgh in November when 800 Comcast workers lost their union, the Communications Workers of America, through a contested decertification election. Despite the fact that more than half the workers initially said they wanted a union, by the time of the election, the company's scare tactics had worked, and the workers who wanted to keep their union narrowly lost. On June 16, however, 415 technical workers at Comcast locations in the South Hills and on Corliss Street voted in a rerun election to retain their union. Today they are still waiting to begin contract talks.

It's ironic that every year on Independence Day, we honor and celebrate the basic freedoms that are the tenets of American democracy. One of the most important victories for freedom in this country, one that many workers across Pennsylvania made huge sacrifices for, was our basic right to form unions and bargain collectively under the National Labor Relations Act.

This is no small matter: More than 42 million working people in the United States say they would vote for a union if given a fair chance.

New bipartisan federal legislation has been introduced in Congress called the Employee Free Choice Act. The Employee Free Choice Act will allow workers to form unions without the grueling obstacles they currently face through the contentious and delay-prone National Labor Relation Board process. Already 205 U.S. representatives and 32 U.S. senators have signed on as co-sponsors.

If this legislation becomes law, after workers such as John vote to form a union, either party would have the right to request federal mediation. If no agreement is reached, after a month of mediation, either party can pursue binding arbitration.

During the week when we celebrate our freedom on Independence Day, tens of thousands of workers and their allies will send postcards to elected leaders asking them to support this important legislation.

Workers are simply asking for fairness in their decision on whether or not to form a union. After workers demonstrate majority support, an employer should not be allowed to stall or wage a campaign to prevent workers from exercising their democratic choice and fundamental right.