CARSON CITY -- A national organization charged Monday that a seemingly innocuous bill passed unanimously by the Assembly would gut the state's right-to-work law.

"No Nevada employee should be required to pay a private organization for 'representation' he or she didn't ask for and wouldn't support if given a choice," said National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix.

His organization is calling on Nevadans to express their opposition to Assembly Bill 69. A hearing on the bill is scheduled for 7 a.m. today before the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee.

"The union bosses think they have found a back-door scheme to cut the heart out of Nevada's Right to Work Law while leaving it on the books," Mix said in a statement. "But there's no question this bill is an attempt to intimidate nonunion workers into paying dues to union bosses."

Under the state's Right to Work Law, no employee can be forced to join a union.

Despite Mix's strong statements, the bill as written says a nonunion employee "may" be asked by a labor organization to pay for services it performs on the worker's behalf if they were "requested" by the employee.

Nonunion employees would have been required to pay for union services as a condition of their employment in an earlier version of the bill.

Once the bill was amended, it drew support on April 26 from every Assembly member, including the most conservative, pro-business members.

James Knode, director of state legislation for the National Right to Work Committee, acknowledged the organization initially did not see the amendments approved in the Assembly.

But Knode still maintained the bill would be tantamount to dissolving the Right to Work Law.

In a statement, the National Right to Work Committee said the bill "authorizes union officers to force nonunion workers who must use the union-controlled grievance process to pay 'fees' that are potentially even more than the cost of union membership dues."

The bill actually says: "A labor organization may require an employee in a bargaining unit who is not a member of the labor organization to pay a service fee to the labor organization for any services that the labor organization provides to the employee upon request of that employee."

Service fees, according to the bill, must represent "the reasonable costs" incurred by the labor organization for the work it performs.