Without the change, said Lori Gay, a critical care nurse at Salt Lake Regional Medical Center for the last 23 years, "nurses in this country will never have a clear and direct path to make their voices heard."

Gay recently told a House labor committee how nurses at her hospital wanted to protect themselves against profit-motivated management decisions, and organized a union election in 2002.

But the hospital challenged the vote, arguing so-called "charge nurses" who have some supervisory duties but cannot hire, fire or discipline other nurses, are technically management and should not be allowed to vote.

The National Labor Relations Board impounded the ballots during the challenge, which took years to wind its way through the appeals process, eventually being grouped with similar challenges at other hospitals. Last October, the board ruled against the nurses.

Gay said the decision means only the greenest nurses, not yet senior enough to be assigned the supervisory duties, could vote. In all, 64 nurses of the 153 nurses would be excluded from the vote and the union benefits.

"Almost every nurse at some point does charge duty," Gay said. "The reality of the situation we are now dealing with is absurd."

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Rob Andrews, D-N.J., would essentially reverse the NLRB decision, and change the law so that employees would have to spend a majority of their time in a supervisory role to be excluded from union votes.

Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., said the proposed legislation would dramatically change the definition of who is considered a supervisor, and would contradict the definition used in other statutes.

And G. Roger King, testifying on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the legislation is contrary to two Supreme Court rulings, would harm employers and would not be limited to health care. Any business where employees are used partly in a supervisory capacity would be affected.

"I see a nurse who's in charge makes life or death decisions regarding patients every minute. If that's not supervisory I don't know what is," King said.

But Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., a nurse for 33 years before coming to Congress, scolded King, calling his group's opposition "an insult to everyone in the health care field."

"You really don't know anything about nursing or what is going on in a hospital on a day-to-day basis," she said.