WASHINGTON - Job insecurity, Wall Street malfeasance, and the increasing loss of health and retirement benefits are causing American workers to sound a "rising crescendo" of discontent.

National Labor Relations Board member Wilma Liebman used that term to describe her take on the American workers' psyche these days during the days before the Nov. 4 election. She added that the discontent could put the nation on the brink of a "perfect storm" for changes in public labor law.

The controversy over deeply divided National Labor Relations Act rulings "has led to further scrutiny of labor law, which has been marginalized and has not been part of the economic debate for too long," she added.

Liebman was part of a mix of pro-business and pro-labor speakers invited to talk on Oct. 2 at a conference sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce called "Labor Policy at a Crossroads." Liebman was appointed to her position in 1997, and has twice been reappointed by President Bush as one of the two minority Democratic members of the five-member NLRB panel.

The Chamber's conference moderator said when he worked at the U.S. Department of Labor in 2001, "one of the things that surprised me most was how little change there has been in labor policy for decades." The Wagner Act created the National Labor Relations Board and encouraged the formation of unions in 1935, and the Republican-backed Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, adopted over President Truman's veto, placed restrictions on union clout. OSHA came along in the 1970s. The Family Medical Leave Act was adopted in the 1990s.

Now, he said. "we stand potentially at the brink of the most dramatic change" in half a century for U.S. labor law. "What's driving the change," he said. "is the remarkable resurgence of organized labor as a powerhouse in American politics."

U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Tom Donahue told the audience that unions and management have worked together well on recent issues, like the Pension Protection Act, immigration reform and increasing infrastructure spending.

However, "in this election," Donahue said. "both sides are fighting for different versions of how the government should regulate the workplace." He cautioned against a "Europeanized" economic system where unions have more clout than in the U.S. Donahue also cautioned against the presence of too much government, and said businesses should be allowed to "structure themselves in a way that works best for them to compete in a global economy."

He said the business community's "current labor policy" revolves around an agenda "that has worked for more than 60 years." But all those years without labor law reform is not a good thing in today's world, Liebman said. "Congressional silence for over 60 years on labor law and policy… has made it difficult to apply the law in a coherent way," especially given the vast changes in workplaces over the years, she said.

Liebman said after eight years of the Bush administration - which she pointed out highlighted its anti-labor bent with the refusal to allow Homeland Security Department workers to organize - "we're at a unique moment" in American history. She said more than just labor law reform is needed. "We need creative leadership. We need a clear message and legal structure with teeth. We need to minimize the adversarial relationship between labor and management."

Current labor law was spawned during the Great Depression, and now history may be repeating itself. "Current labor law is a product of earlier economic crisis (namely the Great Depression)," Liebman said. "With the turmoil we're seeing now, we're likely to see new initiatives, if for nothing else to save capitalism from itself. The post-war social contract is crumbling. What will we do to replace it?"