In their native American ingenuity, no doubt both sides would come up with new and clever ways to avoid bargaining with each other freely. Those quaint days would be gone. For the clock would be running on their freedom to negotiate. And one side or the other would be tempted to run the clock out, or use the impending deadline to press the other to accept its terms. Take it or leave it -- to arbitration.

In a free society, neither labor nor management should be subject to such coercion. But this bill, with its 120-day deadline to reach an agreement or else, makes the old Taft-Hartley Act, with its 80-day cooling-off period before a major strike is called, seem almost mild.

The card-check bill was bad enough before, when it just deprived workers of their right to vote. But these additional provisions may be even worse. Pass this bill into law and the principle at the heart of collective bargaining -- the ability to negotiate free of pressure -- would be gone with the secret ballot.

This new system would drastically change the way labor and management relate to one another when it comes to settling their differences. Before, management could continue to negotiate until it had a deal it could live with, and the same went for the labor union. Now government would step in if it didn't think the company and the union were moving fast enough.

If and when this radical change becomes law, and the 120 days are past, it'll be up to government-appointed arbitrators to decide any disagreements between labor and management -- even though the arbitrators won't be the ones who have to live with their decision. That burden would fall on workers and managers. Government would make the decision, all we the people would have to do is abide by it.

In Italy in an earlier decade, this approach to labor-management relations, which gives the state the final say, was part of a larger system. That system had a name: fascism. Somewhere, Benito Mussolini is smiling.