The Nation’s Chris Hayes was spot on this week in talking about Wal-Mart’s attempt to tell workers how to vote: Wal-Mart’s actions demonstrate how urgently workers need the Employee Free Choice Act. 

On Keith Olbermann's "Countdown," Hayes said:

It’s delicious that they [Wal-Mart] show exactly why the Employee Free Choice Act is so needed. The mechanism of intimidation an employer has over an employee is so powerful that running a union election has become incredibly difficult, almost impossible.

When your employer can have a mandatory meeting and sit you down in a room for hours on end showing anti-union propaganda or telling you who they think you should vote for. And you have to listen to them because you can’t walk out of that room and not get fired. Those are precisely the conditions the Employee Free Choice Act is designed to remedy.

As AFL-CIO NOW explains, Wal-Mart's worker indimidation may have just backfired, energizing Employee Free Choice Act supporters and amplifying the national discussion about worker indimidation by anti-union companies like Wal-Mart. 

Incidents like this also debunk the absurd idea that opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act have democratic principles or workers' best interests in mind.  Would anti-union corporations, the Chamber of Commerce, and right-wing front groups really spend millions of dollars to protect workers' rights?  We don't think so.