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.”