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A new study that says employers are increasingly engaging in aggressive anti-union behavior has triggered yet more debate between organized labor and management.

Union proponents say the study highlights years worth of abusive and intimidating behavior by employers, and that their efforts to block unions has intensified and become more punitive than in the past. But management-side lawyers counter that the report is inaccurate and misleading, and is designed merely to drum up support for the controversial Employee Free Choice Act, proposed legislation that would do away with secret ballot elections and stiffen the penalties for retaliation.

The study's author, labor expert and Cornell University professor Kate Bronfenbrenner, maintains that her report, released on May 20, has no agenda. She said it merely documents employer behavior in union elections monitored by the National Labor Relations Board between 1999 and 2003. She examined 1,004 randomly sampled NLRB certification elections and surveyed participants in 562 of the campaigns to compile the report, titled No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing.

Among the study's findings:

• 63 percent of employers interrogated workers in one-on-one meetings with their supervisors about support for the union.

• 54 percent threatened workers in such meetings.

• 57 percent threatened to close the work site.

• 47 percent threatened to cut wages and benefits.

• 34 percent fired workers.

"Our labor law system is not working," said Bronfenbrenner, director of Labor Education Research at Cornell. "That data from my report shows that the current system is broken. Employers are able to act in total disregard of the law, and I think the people are not aware of that."

What's worse, she added, is that "employers have become so emboldened that they act with total impunity. They know that they can get away with breaking the law."

Bronfenbrenner, a former union organizer herself, said that several foundations, including pro-labor groups, financed her study. She said that she took on the project at the request of Congress, labor groups, academic experts and some members of the media, who, she said, all wanted fresh statistics on employer behavior during union organizing. Her latest report compares employer behavior data to previous studies during the past 20 years.

"[They] wanted me to update my numbers," she said.

Management-side lawyers aren't convinced.

"Kate is very biased in favor of unions. She is a former union organizer, and she no doubt is releasing this report to attempt to drum up support for the egregiously, misnamed Employee Free Choice Act," said Michael Casey, managing partner of the Miami office of New York's Epstein Becker & Green.

Casey, who represents employers in labor matters and has handled dozens of union elections in his career, believes the study is "very misleading." He said, for example, that interrogation charges often arise in very innocuous circumstances, when an employee has a casual conversation over coffee with a supervisor about organizing, and the supervisor asks some simple questions that result in several interrogation charges.

"Some employers do violate the law. Some will fire people for union organization activities. But that's rare," Casey said. "I think to the extent that employers are becoming more vigorous in their representation [during elections], it's a response to the unions' desperate attacks and confrontational strategies."

Casey believes it's the unions "desperate for members" that have become more aggressive with their tactics, not employers.

"They have become more aggressive and more confrontational in their organizing campaign. ... They're becoming more confrontational with throwing up mass picketing at sites, and trying to keep workers from going into work who want to work, and threatening employees who want to work to get them to sign union cards," said. "The organizers are really pushing the envelope."

Management-side attorney Peter Conrad, a partner in the New York office of Proskauer Rose, also is skeptical of the report's conclusions.

"I don't find that employers are responding to organizing in the manner that this author suggests," Conrad said. "Threatening plant closure, discharging employees -- these things have happened, I'm sure -- but I don't think that the picture that is presented by this study is one that I can say is borne out by my own experience."

In contrast, Conrad said that in recent years, he has witnessed employers taking a more neutral stance during organizing drives, and greater voluntary recognition of unions.

"[Bronfenbrenner is] disregarding the trend toward neutrality, and toward voluntary recognition," Conrad said, adding that unfair labor practices have also gone down in recent years. "She sees a throwback here to broken legs from the 30s, but we're not living in that era. And I just don't think that there's a great deal of credibility to the conclusion she reaches."

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