U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin told a crowd of labor activists Thursday that he had amassed the 60 votes needed to pass a version of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) back in July but that Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy’s illness prevented him from casting the deciding vote.

From the Washington, D.C.,-based newspaper The Hill:

“As of July, I can tell you this openly and I know the press is all here but we had worked out a pretty good agreement. Labor was at the table,” Harkin told a crowd of activists organized by American Rights at Work, a labor advocacy group. …

Harkin said prominent labor leaders were on board with the deal, including AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union.

“That’s when we needed 60 votes and that’s when I called to get Sen. Kennedy down because we needed him for three days. That’s when Dr. Horowitz told me that he couldn’t make it,” Harkin said.

Harkin has been the lead negotiator in the Senate on the bill, which would make it easier for labor unions to organize. He said in May that the bill did not have enough support to avoid a filibuster and that a compromise would have to be struck. That compromise was widely believed to involve removing the “card-check” provision, which would give workers the right to unionize as soon as a majority of employees in a workplace signed cards saying they want a union.

Workers can already unionize in this manner, but an employer can veto the vote and demand a vote by secret ballot.

The New York Times reported in July that the provision was already gone, but Harkin spokeswoman Kate Cyrul said everything was still on the table.

Harkin would not specify what was included in the July bill that managed to garner 60 votes, telling The Hill “I will not say because it was closely held, it never leaked out and it still hasn’t. I took it off the front-burner and put it on the back-burner so it is still on warm, OK?”

Now that Harkin is chair of the powerful Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, most assume EFCA will have new life.

Republicans and several conservative Senate Democrats have opening opposed the legislation, which has drawn the ire of the business community who say that without a secret ballot workers will be intimidated into joining a union.

Supporters of the bill counter that employees already face intimidation from their employer when contemplating a union vote. Under the current law employers can veto workers’ decision to organize through majority signup and force them into the election process where, according to a recent study, a pro-union worker is illegally fired in a quarter of all organizing drives.

(h/t Bleeding Heartland)