Business and labor groups are intensifying their battle over a measure that would make it easier to organize unions, offering a preview of what is certain to be one of the earliest and hardest-fought legislative battles in the new Congress.

The Employee Free Choice Act, which would be the most significant overhaul of federal labor law in six decades, would give workers who want a union two options: a card check or an election overseen by the National Labor Relations Board.

Unlike current law, employers would not be able to demand that workers cast secret ballots. The legislation also would require employers and unions to submit to binding arbitration if they are unable to reach a contract agreement within 120 days.

Democratic congressional leaders have said they plan to move on the bill quickly once Congress convenes in January. Labor leaders and other supporters said the measure would help restore bargaining power to workers whose wages have fallen behind inflation in recent years.

Labor organizers said current rules allow companies to pressure workers through campaigns that often include closed-door meetings. They also said that the arbitration rule is necessary to prod employers to bargain in good faith. Currently, roughly one-third of new unions fail to reach agreements on contracts with their employers, said Kate Bronfenbrenner, a Cornell University researcher.

Passage of the legislation would mean “that the 60-plus percent of people in the country who have expressed the opinion that, if given a fair choice, they would be in a union job, would actually get to be in a union job,” Freiboth said. “This is about allowing workers the fair opportunity to form or join a union and to restore the promise of the National Labor Relations Act passed in the ’30s that has been undermined.”

Greg Denier, spokesman for the labor coalition Change to Win, framed the issue as an economic-recovery package. “Workers’ wages are what drive consumption,” he said. “If [workers’] wages are stagnant, you are undermining the foundation of economic growth.”