WASHINGTON — Tennessee and Georgia’s Republican members of Congress on Tuesday blasted a Democratic-sponsored bill that would make it easier for workers to join unions.

The Republicans said the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow workers to establish a union without having to hold a secret-ballot vote, would allow union leaders to coerce and intimidate workers into joining. The bill was introduced Tuesday in both the House and the Senate.

“In my view, this legislation we are considering today is the most radical piece of legislation before the Congress,” Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said at a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which he sits on. “It ought to be called the Employee No Choice Act because it takes away the secret ballot.”

Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., also a member of the committee, where the bill was introduced in the Senate, said the current secret ballot system is preferable because it neither advocates nor discourages unionization.

“Support for this legislation is based on the fear that, if left to their own devices in the privacy of a voting booth, some American workers might choose not to join a union,” he said. “This legislation creates a situation of worker intimidation and prohibits the ability of management and labor to work together in an increasingly dynamic economy.”

Supporters of the bill counter that anti-union business owners and executives have made unionization difficult and that workers need more protections to ensure fair working conditions.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who introduced the bill in the Senate, said the penalties on employers who fire workers for organizing amount “to little more than a slap on the wrist.”

“When 60 percent of workers want to join a union but only 7 percent belong to one, something is broken,” he said. “When the average CEO makes 400 times what an average worker makes, something is broken. When ordinary workers lose their pensions, but executives get gold-plated deferred compensation arrangements, something is broken.”

A House version of the bill has been introduced by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.

Unions have made a priority out of the legislation, which failed last year, while business groups are opposed.