As I said when I started this blog, I’m often inaccurate in my prognostications about Congress. Being unpredictable is a characteristic of Capitol Hill.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote that Congress has a habit of cramming for “finals” at various times of the year just before long breaks. It was possible that important workplace policy might be attached to non-related bills in an effort to push it through.

I was wrong. No major riders were attached to a massive (approximately 1,400 pages) bill that will fund the government for the next fiscal year. Congress approved the measure Wednesday, December 19.

E. Neil Trautwein, vice president and employee benefits counsel at the National Retail Federation, said House members and senators refrained from attaching extraneous items to the spending bill because they wanted to get home.

They were already 2½ months late approving government spending levels. The omnibus encompassed funding for 11 federal agencies. In fairness to the Democratic majorities, President Bush vetoed one stand-alone appropriations bill and threatened to torpedo others that exceeded the spending caps he outlined.

“Congress made the decision to have as few ornaments on the tree as possible so that the process didn’t get slowed,” Trautwein said. “They have no desire to be here longer than they have to be.”

In Washington, the Christmas tree metaphor is often used to describe loading up a bill with amendments. For Trautwein and others representing business interests, the fact that riders did not decorate the spending bill was an early Christmas present.

Trautwein feared that genetic discrimination and mental health parity legislation would be surreptitiously slipped into the omnibus. Both bills have been addressed by committees. Genetic discrimination has been passed by the House and mental health parity by the Senate.

But critical work remains in ironing out differences between the bodies on each bill. Negotiations would have been curtailed if they’d hopped a ride on the government funding vehicle.

Now both measures remain on the congressional “to do” list. The challenge will be to get to them during an election year, when politics and a limited number of session days tend to truncate the legislative process.

“The only question in my mind is if they move on their own or if anything moves at all,” Trautwein says.

The reaction to what didn’t happen as Congress was hurrying to get home for the holidays can reveal much about what lies ahead in Washington.

As I mentioned in my last blog entry, keep an eye on organized labor. That movement was upset by a rider that was not attached to the omnibus bill. It would have blocked the Department of Labor’s Office of Labor Management Standards from implementing changes in conflict-of-interest disclosure forms.

The Republican side of the House Education and Labor Committee asserted that the updated forms would “provide greater transparency and more meaningful information to rank-and-file union members.”

That wasn’t labor’s view. In a statement, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney rebuked the Democratic majorities for backing off when the GOP objected to the rider. He called the disclosure policy a “rank new directive from the Bush Labor Department” that would require “more than 100,000 workplace volunteers to report their run-of-the-mill consumer transactions to the federal government.”

Sweeney served notice that he expected Democrats to do better by labor, which provided much funding and grass-roots support for the party’s takeover of Congress in 2006.

“As we go into 2008, the Democrats must stand their ground on behalf of the voters who elected them to lead,” Sweeney said. He also promised to use labor’s electoral might to defeat Republican “obstructionists.”

If labor helps Democrats increase their majorities and capture the White House in 2008, look for it to demand changes at the National Labor Relations Board. Last week, a joint House-Senate hearing on recent NLRB rulings left no doubt that Democrats believe the Bush-majority board is fundamentally anti-union.

Democratic leaders haven’t ruled out the possibility of introducing legislation to overturn recent NLRB rulings. And they have sent a signal to Bush not to reappoint NLRB members without a thorough vetting by the Senate.

They’re laying the groundwork for 2008 and beyond. At the December 13 hearing, Rep. George Miller, D-California, said, “It’s important to start building this record to protect basic rights.”

Robert Battista, who was NLRB chairman at the time of the hearing but whose term expired December 16, hypothesized that organized labor and Democrats were messaging at the meeting.

“Unions want to build momentum for labor law reform,” he said in an interview after his testimony. “This [hearing] might be part and parcel of that.”

Pay attention to the 2008 campaigns to learn more.

A year or so ago, President Clinton admonished Democrats who lamented the policies that President Bush has pursued. He certainly didn’t support Bush’s programs, but he told his fellow Democrats that they shouldn’t act surprised by Bush’s agenda. 

“He’s just doing what he said he would do in the campaign,” the former president said.

A similar telegraphing is under way by organized labor. It is laying out a crystal clear game plan it will pursue if a Democrat wins the White House and the party maintains control of the House and increases its Senate majority next November.

Corporate and senior HR executives should forgo gnashing their teeth around March 2009, when Democratic priorities for workplace legislation might be zooming through the House and perhaps the Senate too. They should be able to see it coming now.

The atmosphere in Washington could be balmy for labor in 2009. Senate Republicans likely will have a significantly reduced minority and a more limited ability to stop bills through a filibuster. More important, there could be a Democratic president sitting in the White House waiting to sign legislation like the Employee Free Choice Act.

That measure is the holy grail for the labor movement. It would force companies to recognize a union if 50 percent of workers sign cards authorizing one. No longer would a firm be able to insist on a secret-ballot election monitored by the National Labor Relations Board. In addition, it would take away the ability of a company to block a first contract and would impose penalties of $20,000 for each violation of a worker’s right to promote a union.

Labor argues that such a measure is required to bolster wages and benefits because it would level the playing field against corporations that routinely intimidate employees who try to form unions. They also assert that tens of millions of employees would join unions if the so-called card-check bill fosters a more democratic workplace.

Business groups, of course, stridently oppose the bill. They say the measure would give unions a free hand to coerce workers into joining their ranks. Republicans accuse Democrats of backing the measure because it would revive a sagging labor movement and would be repayment for labor’s help at election time.

The bill passed the House earlier this year but was filibustered by Senate Republicans.

This measure is such a priority for unions that they are trying to get the whole world behind it. The AFL-CIO brought to Washington this week more than 200 union leaders from 63 countries. Ostensibly, the event focused on ways that labor could reach across borders in the same way that international corporations do.

Participants no doubt spent a lot of time mulling strategy and tactics for obtaining a higher quality of life for their members. But the public portions of the event focused almost exclusively on domestic U.S. politics, specifically the card-check bill.

As you can read in the story I filed Wednesday, December 12, international unions were as passionate about the bill as their U.S. counterparts, saying that its approval would bolster organizing around the world:

“Global Unions Unite to Fight ‘Lawless’ U.S. Corporations”

In a moment that caused cognitive dissonance, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made the following comment at the forum: “This is not a political event. This is an event about American workers and workers around the world.”

With all due respect to the speaker, it absolutely was a political event. And it wasn’t just American politicians who were calling for U.S. voters to elect more House and Senate members who would approve the card-check bill.

Sharan Burrow, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, said that a conservative government had been thrown out in her country this year and replaced by one more sympathetic to workers and unions.

She urged U.S. voters to do the same next year.

“No politician deserves to get elected if they’re not [going] to support rights of working people and their families,” she said. If a new Congress and president make the card-check bill a law, “you will grow the American economy with dignity.”

Pelosi implied that the political situation in Washington is not quite at that point, but it is close.

“The leverage in Congress is now with working people,” she said. “With one more election, we’ll have enough power to make a substantial difference.”

The business community—and the whole world—can see it coming.

The rhythm of life in Washington often mirrors that of a college campus. A friend of mine is studying for her master’s degree and her stress level is skyrocketing ahead of final exams later this month.

Congress also tends to make a big push just before long breaks—in the spring, late summer and near Christmas. But when Congress crams for its finals, it’s not grades but significant public policy that hangs in the balance.

This December is a prime example. Whether you accept President Bush’s argument that this has been a do-nothing Congress or the Democrats’ assertion that the White House and congressional Republicans have been obstructionists, the fact is that much work has been left to the last minute.

What could happen now is a rush to pass all kinds of legislation that must be approved by December 31. The catch is that there’s not time for much of it to be considered as stand-alone bills. In some cases, there’s not even time to properly legislate.

For instance, a bill that would make technical corrections to last year’s massive pension reform law hasn’t had a hearing in the House or Senate. But that likely won’t stop legislators from attaching it to a piece of tax legislation that must move by the end of the year.

One version of a technical corrections measure floating around would do more than tweak last year’s legislation. It would delay implementation for a year—from January 1, 2008, to January 1, 2009.

This approach probably won’t make it through, but it is possible to attach it to any bill that moves—with little debate or much transparency. Corporate executives could wake up to a whole new pension world one day this month and not know it happened—unless they’re informed by their highly paid Washington lobbyists, who mostly don’t support the delay.

Another bill that would affect employers is an expansion of the safety net for workers who lose their jobs due to trade. The House has passed such a measure, which also increases the amount of warning companies must give before they shutter operations because of global competition.

But the Senate has yet to act on a similar bill. The problem is that the trade assistance law expires on December 31. So, if Congress doesn’t approve another temporary extension, it will have to dispatch with this issue as it races for the Christmas exit.

Here are some other workplace bills that have been percolating this year and may come to a full boil in the waning weeks of the congressional session: expansion of a state children’s health program, funding for Labor Department programs (one of 11 appropriations bills that has yet to be approved), mental health coverage and genetic discrimination.

An additional piece of business that the administration and Senate have put off that must be completed by the end of December is approval of two nominations for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and three for the National Labor Relations Board. Each of the bodies has five members.

Leaving two or three slots open might not shut down operations, but it certainly would diminish them. Consideration of many important discrimination and unionization cases may be undermined.

EEOC Commissioner Stuart Ishimaru is not certain whether he will be working at the agency January 1. His term expired in July, and he will be forced to leave at the end of this month if he’s not confirmed.

“I hope it happens; something needs to happen,” he told me in an interview at an AARP event December 4 celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. “You never know. The politics in this town are unpredictable, especially at the end of a session.”

Unfortunately, it’s this time of year when the administration’s and Congress’s worst traits of procrastination and gridlock shine like wreaths hanging on the Capitol and the White House.