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While it’s easier to make a movie about unionizing a or , the current effort to change the nation’s labor laws affects even the construction industry’s mobile workforce.

The Employee Free Choice Act is showing signs of life after a much-touted political death earlier this year. The card-check provision, which allows workers to form a union by collecting signatures, looks like it won’t survive the political process.

But other provisions, including those requiring shorter times for certification elections, binding arbitration and increased fines for employers who break the law, could make it into the final bill.

While individual building contractors choose whether to use union labor, some trades work in shops where traditional organizing drives can take place, said Bob Shiprack, executive secretary of the Oregon State Building and Construction Trades Council.

More significant, Shiprack said, is the broader effect of strengthening labor laws. “It’s just important to get some integrity back into the system,” he said.

“One test of a democracy is whether you have free trade unions and an ability for workers to choose to associate together for the common good,” he said.

Groups working against the bill say they’re trying to preserve employers’ rights. Requiring binding arbitration would shift the power to negotiate contracts to a government official, said John Killin, president of the Associated Builders and Contractors Pacific Northwest Chapter.

“If those (contract) details don’t work for that employer, you might be shutting down that employer,” Killin said.