(Crain’s) — Unions are planning aggressive organizing drives at Chicago-area hospitals in the wake of Tuesday’s election of Barack Obama, a close ally of organized labor.

The Chicago hospital market has been a tough one for unions to crack — less than 10% of hospital workers in the city and suburbs are union members, one of the lowest rates among large U.S. cities. But local hospitals would be fertile ground for union campaigns under a measure championed by Mr. Obama that would make it easier for unions to sign up new members.

“The hospitals here are a huge target,” says Christopher Cimino, a Chicago-based labor consultant who works with hospitals. “They’re worried.”

Mr. Obama is co-sponsor of a bill that would require employers to recognize unions if a majority of employees sign “union-authorization” cards, eliminating the current secret-ballot process. The House passed the Employee Free Choice Act in 2007, but Senate Republicans blocked the bill. It faced a certain veto from President George W. Bush.

Business groups are spending millions of dollars to fight the measure, which they claim would strip employers of their ability to communicate with workers regarding the pros and cons of unionizing. Labor leaders say the current process allows employers to quash organizing drives by pressuring employees.

Chicago hospitals appear ready for a battle regardless of whether the bill passes. After spending much of the last two years campaigning for labor-friendly Democrats, local union leaders say they’ll quickly shift their focus to organizing. A sweeping labor-reform law would boost those efforts, they say.

“It would change the whole landscape and give more incentive for hospitals to work with labor,” says Keith Kelleher, president of SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana. The chapter of the Service Employees International Union has 83,000 members in the two states, including almost 5,000 at Illinois hospitals.

Local hospitals mostly dodged recent organizing efforts. SEIU in 2003 began a campaign aimed at Oak Brook-based Advocate Health Care that tried to galvanize workers on issues like adequate staffing levels and charity care. While the state’s largest hospital chain suffered some public-relations hits, the union hasn’t forced an election at any of Advocate’s eight hospitals.

A similar campaign by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31 against Chicago-based Resurrection Health Care, the state’s second-largest health system, also hasn’t gained much traction.

Mr. Kelleher says SEIU will resume its campaign against Advocate after a lull but adds that the union is “working on campaigns to organize large numbers of hospital workers” at other institutions. SEIU has organized a few smaller employee groups like food-service workers and engineers at Illinois hospitals in recent years but has had better luck with home-health workers and at nursing homes.

An Advocate spokeswoman declines to comment.

AFSCME will keep its focus on Resurrection regardless of whether there is a new labor law, says Roberta Lynch, deputy director of Council 31. “I think Sen. Obama’s election victory will give a lot of people, including workers at Resurrection, tremendous encouragement,” she says.

If a law is passed that makes it easier for workers to join the union, “we are committed to the letter and the spirit of the law no matter what that is,” a Resurrection spokesman says. However, “we don’t see a large groundswell of employees who feel like they need outside representation.”

Another union that has set it sights on Chicago hospitals is the California-based National Nurses Organizing Committee, which represents 1,800 Cook County nurses. It lost an election last year at Mount Sinai Hospital but has organizing committees at many other Chicago hospitals, says Fernando Losada, the union’s director of collective bargaining for Illinois.

“Chicago is a very big opportunity for us nationally,” he says, declining to name specific hospitals.

Only five hospital systems in the Chicago area have unionized registered nurses — by far the largest bargaining unit in hospitals: University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago; Provena Saint Joseph Medical Center in Joliet; University of Chicago Medical Center; Veterans Affairs Medical Center in North Chicago, and the three hospitals run by Cook County, including John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital.

Local hospitals support workers’ right to join a union but want the secret-ballot process retained, says Mary Ann Kelly, vice-president and chief human resources officer at the Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council, a trade group of 140 hospitals and other health care organizations.

Ms. Kelly says many hospitals have improved staffing and benefits in recent years, a big reason unions have not made further inroads.

“It’s a high priority for our hospitals in Chicago to focus on a positive work environment,” she says.