A landmark federal law has been the blueprint for labor organizing in America for generations, but frustrated union leaders want to change the process and have targeted the 2008 election as the way to do it.

Companies and union leaders have been governed by the National Labor Relations Act since the New Deal law was enacted in 1935. But today's labor leaders say the law is outdated and gives employers huge advantages in organizing situations.

The Employee Free Choice Act would be the biggest shift in federal labor law since the 1940s, and people on both sides of this issue agree on one thing: The presidential election and, probably, the battle for firm control of the U.S. Senate, may decide whether this act becomes law.

For decades, the process of a work force becoming unionized has been based on a secret-ballot election. First, workers with interest in a union sign authorization cards. If 30% sign, the National Labor Relations Board schedules an election that the government agency supervises, and a majority vote brings in a union.

The proposed law, sometimes called the "card check" law, would force employers to recognize the union as the workers' bargaining agent if 50% sign the authorization cards. It would streamline the process from its current from six weeks to what could be a matter of days.

Few employers are aware of this issue or its possible consequences, said Tom Lenz, an employment lawyer with Cerritos-based firm Atkinson, Andelson, Loya Ruud and Romo and a former attorney for the National Labor Relations Board in Los Angeles.

"I think in many instances there is a lack of awareness on how important it is to unions and the Democratic agenda," Lenz said. "Unions have been able to fly under the radar with this, but people who follow it know it would radically change the way unions can organize."

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Photo By Claudia Bustamonte / The Press-Enterprise

Close to 100 Inland Valley Medical Center nurses and supporters picketed and held a candlelight vigil in 2005 to protest the union's stalled negotiations with the hospital.

It passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 2007 on a party-line vote but did not pass the Senate. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was a co-sponsor in the Senate and is likely to sign it if he's elected.

"If Obama wins it has a chance," said Ruth Milkman, a UCLA sociology professor and director of the UC Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. "But there's no way George Bush would sign it."

Opponents of the measure say it goes against the democratic principles of the secret ballot. A signed authorization card tells union leaders who favored the union and who did not.

Also, the law would force employers to start negotiating contracts within 10 days, and calls for federal mediation and arbitration if the bargaining takes more than three months.

Unions say these time frames - the six weeks before and election and the months, sometimes many months, before that first contract is agreed on - give employers a home-field advantage they exploit, sometimes unethically and illegally.

For example, employers can order workers to attend lectures during work hours on company property where officials will try to dissuade workers from voting in favor of the union. Union recruiters are not allowed on the employers' grounds. Often national companies will spend heavily on outside consultants to run these sessions.

Also, unions say employers use the run-up time to intimidate or threaten workers. Several employers in Inland Southern California have faced National Labor Relations Board charges about these threats. And, if the union is ratified, often the employer is under no pressure to bargain with its workers for a contract.

Leaders of the California Nurses Association say all this happened at Inland Valley Medical Center in Wildomar, where registered nurses voted to unionize in 2004. Initially the hospital attempted to hold up the vote by asking it to include nurses at a hospital in Murrieta owned by the same corporation, King of Prussia, Pa.-based Universal Health Services Inc.

The National Labor Relations Board disagreed and ordered the election to go forward. Nurses ratified the union in May 2004, but almost two years passed with no contract, and nurses, paying union dues with nothing to show for it, voted to decertify CNA.

That election was so rife with intimidating and coercive tactics by hospital executives and an outside consultant that a federal judge ordered it set aside. A second election was ordered, but the nurses union withdrew last month and gave up its effort to represent the hospital's nurses.

Under current law the remedies for employers who break the law consist of posting notices over the time clock or in a lunchroom admitting their guilt. The EFCA as currently proposed, includes fines of up to $20,000 per instance.

"Employers have had basically free reign" to skirt the law using these tactics, said Mike Bergen, secretary-treasurer of Bloomington-based Teamsters Local 166, which represents Inland Southern California warehouse and production workers, among others. "I know what the law is, but employers do try to scare and intimidate workers."

Bergen, whose local has tried without success to organize Lowe's Cos. Inc's massive distribution center in Perris, said this law will benefit all workers and not just those whose shops are targets for organizers.

"The EFCA would let them get over the hump to where they want to be," Bergin said. "Other employers will get their people's pay and benefits up just to keep us out, so in that regard, everyone wins."

The current law calls for 42 calendar days between when a union submits a petition and when the National Labor Relations Board schedules an election. James Small, regional director of Region 21, which covers Riverside County, said complications often arise with petitions but regions manage to hit that deadline 90 percent of the time.

"The current process is fair," said Lenz, the employment lawyer and former NLRB attorney. "The National Labor Relations Board does a good, admirable job, and their credibility is being besmirched. The agency exists so employees can have a choice."

But the provision in the EFCA that calls for federal mediators or arbitrators to facilitate the first contract is likely to be the most onerous for businesses. "Arbitration" is a word that makes business leaders blanch because it means an outsider is making critical decisions for private industry.

"I think it's the most offensive part of the EFCA, and a lot of lawyers think it's unconstitutional," said George Howard, an employment attorney with Jones Day in San Diego.