While organized labor leaders continue to push for passage this year of the Employee Free Choice Act – which is expected to ease the organizing process for unions and help increase membership rolls – a July 31 Wall Street Journal article said odds of a 2009 vote are “dim.”

The reasons: health care is dominating all the debate in Washington D.C.. Also, two Democratic senators who are needed to make 60 votes and break a Republican filibuster, Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, may be physically unable to attend a floor vote.

And, there has been little headway in massaging language in the bill itself to bring about a compromise with Democratic senators from conservative states whose votes are also needed for passage. Their concerns are brought up daily by the business community – the perception that the EFCA outlaws the secret ballot, and allows the simple signing of a card, when it comes time for workers to vote for or against union representation.

The other concern of those senators: the lack of headway on the bill’s requirement that mandatory arbitration be used if newly instituted unions can’t reach an agreement on wages, benefits and other issues within 120 days. The business community also hates this mandate.

“Unions had hoped the Obama Administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress would act on the bill within the president’s first 100 days, the Journal said, “paving the way for accelerated unionization campaigns to fight eroding membership.” President Obama said he would sign the EFCA, and the measure has easily passed the Democratic-controlled House.

AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff did not rule out a compromise in the Senate to get the EFCA passed. “The important thing is to preserve the essential elements of the Employee Free Choice Act: Restoring the freedom to organize and collectively bargain, and not the details” of how exactly to achieve that goal. “That’s the measure by which any tweaking of the law” will be judged, he told Press Associates.

The AFL-CIO reaffirmed its strong preference for the legislation’s centerpiece: majority sign-up, where once unions get verified union election authorization cards from a majority of workers at a site, they – not the bosses – can choose between automatic immediate recognition of the union or a National Labor Relations Board-run election.

Other alternatives to majority sign-up, including mail-in ballots and quick NLRB-run elections, are not ruled out, Acuff added.  “Both would be dramatically better than what we have now” under labor law, he said.  Present law allows long campaigns with rampant employer intimidation against employees and labor law-breaking.