Unions have been the engine behind millions of workers achieving the American Dream.

Over the last 70 years, unions have led the fight for the minimum wage and the eight-hour work day; championed employer-paid health care and pension plans for workers; played a leading role securing Social Security and Medicare for seniors; and won major advances ensuring workplace safety and workers’ rights.

Unions are just as important today in securing livable wages and benefits. Wages of union members are almost 30 percent higher than those of nonunion workers. And when you include the much better health care and pension benefits union workers receive, the total compensation of union workers is 44% higher than that of non-union workers.

So it’s no wonder that nearly 60 million workers in America say that would join a union if they could. When given the option, workers want a stable job where they can earn enough to support a family, buy a home, send their children to college, and save for retirement.

The more workers unite together in unions, the better off everyone is. During contract negotiations, you know that having more union workers in your industry means more power at the bargaining table with your employer. Building this worker power in unions is the best way to raise the standard for wages and benefits for all workers.

But when unions are under attack, as they are today, workers face stagnant wages and declining health and retirement benefits.

Good jobs are vanishing, and health care coverage and retirement security are slipping out of reach. The American dream is slipping away from our children’s reach. For the first time in history, Americans believe their children will be worse off financially than they are.

To restore the American Dream, we need to turn the low-paying, no-benefit jobs of today into the union wage, middle-class jobs of tomorrow. Right now, the power employers have over workers is completely out of hand, and the NLRB doesn’t exercise real strength to protect workers or to level the playing field. Workers deserve the chance to make choices on the job that will help them reach their dreams and give their children a better life.

That’s why Congress needs to create a system that respects workers and revives this country’s strong middle class. It needs a system that restores the balance between workers and employers—a system built on fairness, openness and the freedom for workers to make their own choices.

Employee Free Choice would do just that. It would protect the ability of workers to come together and form unions to bargain for better wages and benefits and safer working conditions. Employee Free Choice would protect working families by bolstering financial equality and maintaining a strong middle class. We must support Employee Free Choice because all workers deserve the best chance to reach the American Dream.