Both sides fighting over a bill that would make it easier for workers to form a union have battled to a stalemate. But they’re still swinging away this week.

On March 24, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, dealt a serious setback to supporters of the Employee Free Choice Act when he announced that he would side with those blocking the measure if it comes up for a procedural vote to end Senate debate.

Specter voted to end the filibuster that killed the bill in 2007. But he’s facing a tough primary in 2010, and his opponent stood to gain business support if Specter maintained his EFCA stance.

His change of heart makes it likely that all 41 Senate Republicans will stick together in opposing the bill this year. That puts them at exactly the level they need to sustain a filibuster.

Democrats who had been gingerly tiptoeing around the measure now have no reason to make a tough choice to support it.

That means supporters of organized labor can’t get to the 60 Senate votes they need. But Democrats have large enough majorities in the House and Senate to ensure that the bill remains viable.

So, the war over EFCA between organized labor and the business community rages on. This week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will bring to Washington business leaders from seven states who will fan out across Capitol Hill to stoke EFCA opposition. The chamber asserts that the bill “stifles growth” and “kills jobs.”

On Tuesday, March 31, labor unions are enlisting the help of Hollywood to promote EFCA. Three actors from former NBC show The West Wing will come to Capitol Hill. Martin Sheen, Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff will stand with senators, House members and workers to lift up EFCA as a “key piece of creating an economy that works for everyone again.”

But labor’s effort this week is not likely to break the EFCA deadlock. In order to do that, they may need help from the biggest celebrity in the world—President Barack Obama. Although many observers criticized the McCain campaign commercial about Obama’s star appeal, there was an essential element of truth in it.

He’s on magazine covers all over the newsstand. He’s holding prime-time press conferences and Internet town hall meetings, appearing on The Tonight Show and showing up on just about every network in some type of one-on-one interview.

He has also put his formidable grass-roots online network into action to build momentum for his $3.6 trillion budget, as Carrie Clark noted on the WorldatWork public policy blog.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that a million doors were knocked on during the weekend of March 21 and 22 “in order to build support for the president’s plan to make the important investments in health care, energy independence and education reform, and put ourselves back on that path toward fiscal sustainability, all of which is contained in the budget.”

He went on to say, “And I think the president believes that whenever the public can get more greatly involved in the process, as Congress starts through committees this week and on the floor next week, approving a budget for next year, that that involvement, and hearing the opinions of people that are reached through that door-knocking, are important in the process.”

That’s a level of commitment that Obama has not shown toward EFCA. Yes, he co-sponsored it as a senator. He promoted it during last fall’s campaign. He told an AFL-CIO conference earlier this month—via video—that he wants the bill to pass.

And Vice President Joe Biden, speaking in person at the conference, said that throughout his career, labor has been there to support his campaigns. Now he intends to dance with the one who brought him. Or, as he put it: “It’s time to dance, baby.”

But so far, the Obama administration isn’t ballroom or swing dancing with labor on EFCA, which would require a lot of leading and touching. It is doing arm’s-length disco moves, letting labor find its own way on Capitol Hill with moderate Democrats who are wary of EFCA.

Perhaps Obama is staying away because EFCA will create a firestorm on the Hill. Maybe he’s waiting for the economy to improve before wading into this war. Or maybe he thinks a compromise is needed.

We won’t know until he steps on the dance floor.

President Barack Obama has fulfilled at least one campaign promise. He’s brought change to Washington.

His fervent belief that an activist government can solve most problems offers a sharp difference in trajectory from the Bush administration.

What Obama hasn’t done is transform the capital by ushering in a post-partisan atmosphere. Most legislation so far—like the stimulus package—has been approved largely along party lines.

The best opportunity for bipartisanship is in health care reform. Republicans and Democrats are certainly saying all the right things about working together as this massive undertaking gets under way.

That’s a contrast from 1994, when the Clinton administration’s health plan was opposed almost immediately by Republicans, the business lobby and eventually many Democrats.

Now both parties and many interest groups assert that health care is second only to economic recovery on the “to do” list. Obama allocated a $634 billion down payment on health care reform in his $3.6 trillion budget.

Lon O’Neil, president and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management, says that up to $1 trillion could be saved if reform is done correctly, providing a huge boost to the economy.

“The fundamental, core issue is health care reform,” O’Neil said at a SHRM reception at the Newseum in Washington on March 9.

O’Neil comes by his health care passion honestly. He joined SHRM last year after serving as senior vice president and chief human resources officer at Kaiser Permanente, a $40 billion not-for-profit health care organization.

His perspective on health care sounds as if it’s been informed by dealing with real life problems employees face.

“Many Americans are frightened to death they will lose their health care,” O’Neil said. He went on to say something that demonstrates how much the political context for reform has changed. “It is a civil right to have access to health care,” O’Neil said.

I can’t remember anyone from an organization that often represents management uttering that phrase in 1994.

There’s also a sense of urgency this year that wasn’t present in the previous major health care reform debate, in part because of inexorable increases in costs. There’s a new president, a new Congress and no election in sight until 2010.

“If [health care] isn’t done this year, it won’t be done in the next four years,” Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, told reporters at a breakfast Thursday, March 19, sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The chairman of the committee, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, wants to get a comprehensive health care reform bill onto the Senate floor this summer and has outlined a framework to get things started.

Democratic and Republican leaders of three Senate committees with jurisdiction over health care—finance, health and budget—are meeting regularly to develop a bill. They’re also talking to groups with a stake in reform. So far, participants are reporting a healthy dialogue.

But political divisions could arise over several aspects of health care reform.

For instance, tension could develop over a so-called “public option” for health insurance in which a government-run plan would compete with private insurance to offer coverage. Grassley and other Republicans worry that such a system would “crowd out” the private sector, put company plans at risk and lead to a single-payer system.

“I don’t see a compromise in that area,” Grassley said. “But nothing is uncompromiseable except abortion.” He stressed that “everything is on the table.”

Another sensitive area involves taxing employee health benefits, an issue that my Workforce Management colleague Jeremy Smerd has covered.

“This is an 800-pound gorilla in the room,” Grassley said. “It’s something we’re going to have to move on cautiously. It’s not going to happen unless there’s a great big consensus to get it done.”

There’s also the tricky question of whether companies should have to provide a minimum health care benefit and how it would mesh with existing plans.

“I ask all of the employers with whom I meet to work through those details,” Baucus said in a March 11 speech to the National Business Group on Health. “Help us to develop a pay-or-play structure that works. My vision for reform is one of shared responsibility.”

The only way for Baucus’ vision to come true is for Democrats, Republicans, insurers and the business community to share the inevitable political burden of health care reform.

Elections have consequences. You’ve heard that before as an exhortation to participate in our participatory democracy by voting.

The phrase is not a cliché; it’s playing out in real life in relation to a bill that would make it easier for workers to form unions. The warfare between business interests and organized labor over the Employee Free Choice Act has been going on for years. But now it is fiercer than ever.

The reason is that this time around the measure has a real chance to become law—thanks to the election of President Barack Obama and a sharply increased Democratic majority in the Senate.

The bill was introduced on Tuesday, March 10. It is the top priority of organized labor because it could substantially increase the number of unionized workers, who currently make up about 7.6 percent of the U.S. workforce. Unions also argue that when employees organize, their wages and benefits go up.

It would be natural to assume that the bill would sail to victory. Democrats, a primary labor ally, gained seven Senate seats in the 2008 election, bringing their total to 58. It could rise to 59 after a disputed Minnesota election is settled.

That puts the party only one vote short of 60, the number needed to overcome a Republican filibuster. Such a maneuver killed EFCA in 2007.

But it’s not that simple.

The election also swept Obama into the White House. He was a co-sponsor of the bill while in the Senate. Over the past week, he and Vice President Joe Biden have made their strongest statements in support of the bill since the election.

EFCA is shooting with real bullets. In the previous Congress, it passed the House and stalled in the Senate. Democrats—and the measure’s few Republican supporters—knew that even if it got out of the Senate, President George W. Bush would veto it.

Now EFCA could be on the precipice of enactment. In a presentation to open the Society for Human Resource Management’s Employment Law & Legislative Conference this week, Mike Aitken, SHRM’s director of government relations, explained the new EFCA politics.

“It’s a real vote now,” Aitken told a record attendance of 650. “We have a president who will sign it into law.”

There are no longer any “free” votes. For instance, a Democratic senator from a right-to-work state has to think about whether he or she wants to take the heat from businesses and constituents for making EFCA a reality.

Aitken cautioned SHRM members that EFCA is not a done deal. “It’s not assured that it will become law,” he said. “I want you to keep it in perspective.”

Already some Democrats, such as Arkansas Democratic Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, who voted to end the EFCA filibuster in 2007, are not committing to it yet. Of course, they both hail from the state dominated by one of EFCA’s biggest opponents, Wal-Mart.

In addition, the Senate will vote before the House, where passage is certain. Conservative Democratic House members don’t want to take a tough vote on EFCA only to see it die in the Senate.

The bill was at the top of the agenda for the 260 SHRM conference participants who journeyed to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, March 11, for visits with members of Congress and their staffs.

They more or less went mano-a-mano with hundreds of workers sent up to the Hill this week by the AFL-CIO and other labor groups to lobby in favor of EFCA.

SHRM also ran an ad against the bill in Tuesday editions of Capitol Hill publications. It read: “Every voter in America has the right to a secret ballot. Why shouldn’t every employee?”

In meetings with congressional staff, they were sure to press that point as well as make the case that EFCA could raise the cost of doing business.

“You are the economy,” Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-California and ranking member of the House Education and Labor Committee, told SHRM members at a March 11 breakfast in a Senate office building. “You know what creates jobs. You know what kills jobs.”

But SHRM was careful to point out that it does not oppose unions in principle. For instance, it does not support a bill introduced by Republicans that would mandate secret-ballot elections and prevent companies from voluntarily allowing employees to organize through the card-check process.

Laurence “Lon” O’Neil, SHRM’s new president and CEO, joined the organization last fall after serving for five years as senior vice president and chief human resources officer at Kaiser Permanente.

The huge health care organization has 90,000 employees and a “symbiotic” relationship with its 34 international unions and one national bargaining unit, according to O’Neil.

“We support the right to join a union,” O’Neil said in an interview at a SHRM reception at the Newseum in Washington on Monday. “We support the right to say no to a union.”

Even if EFCA as introduced doesn’t survive the legislative process, an amended version might garner enough votes to get to Obama’s desk.

“Something will pass,” O’Neil said. “Either way, our members will have to implement it. We’ll be there to help every HR head, every CEO manage.”