Data In Table Entered By Column Not Row

I have a table where the designer allowed time reporting for 8 different types of activity on each timecard, then stored the hours by activity in 8 separate columns in the database. Example:

Table A.
Column Headers: Employee|Date|Phase1Hours|Phase2Hours, etc...
Data: Fred Jones| 7/15/13 |3|3, etc...

The problem is there is no way based on this structure to get an employee's hours for the day in columnar form.

To get this data into columnar form I have used Select queries with Union All, for instance:

SELECT Employee, Date, Phase1
FROM Table A
UNION ALL
SELECT Employee, Date, Phase2
FROM Table A
,etc.....

Query is running slow (I am guessing it is because the same table is repeatedly being accessed).