WASHINGTON – (PAI) In an interview with Press Associates Union News Service, AFL-CIO Legislative Director Bill Samuel said a vote on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) “it has to be this year because who knows what Congress will look like” after this fall’s election.

The labor legislation, one of the union movement’s top two legislative priorities — comprehensive, universal, affordable health care is the other — has been hung up virtually ever since the 111th Congress began for two reasons: Health care consumed Congress’ attention, and Senate Democrats lacked the 60 votes they needed to overcome a planned and promised GOP filibuster against the workers’ rights law.

“Negotiations were suspended over the summer” over compromises to get wavering Senate Democrats – including Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter, Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu and Arkansas’ Blanche Lambert Lincoln – on board, Samuel explained. And it has recently been announced that veteran pro-worker Sens. Byron Dorgan D-N.D., and Chris Dodd, D-Conn., are retiring, with Dorgan’s seat up for grabs.

House passage of the Employee Free Choice Act is taken for granted.

Before that, senators talked about several compromises in the legislation. The bill is designed to help level the playing field between workers and bosses in organizing campaigns and in bargaining. The compromises would supersede the bill’s most-notable provision, majority sign-up as an alternative to NLRB-run elections.

“We’ll have input on that” compromise if one is crafted, “but then we’ll have to make a judgment about if it is a bill we can support,” Samuel added.

But even if the three wavering Dems had voted to shut off a GOP filibuster – if not for the bill itself – the bill still would have lacked the 60 Democratic votes for it last year, Samuel points out.

That’s due to the illnesses and sporadic attendance of Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W. Va., the fatal brain cancer and death of longtime labor champion Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., a long vacancy in Minnesota’s second U.S. Senate seat – finally filled by Democrat Al Franken – and a shorter one in Massachusetts after Kennedy died.

“We didn’t have the votes for it last year, but now it’s in a position to pass,” Samuel says of EFCA. “When it does, we still think there’s a hope some Senate Republicans will support it, but the modern Senate is very polarized,” politically. The compromises needed to gain Specter, Landrieu, Lincoln and other wavering Democrats might be enough to get votes from the remaining few Senate GOP moderates, he says.

Nearly everything has taken a back seat to health care, and there is no timetable for a Senate vote on EFCA, Samuel admits.