State Senate Floor Leader Ron Richard said last week debating a right-to-work bill was a top priority for this, the General Assembly's last week.
And the Senate's Small Business, Insurance and Industry Committee heard two hours of testimony on the right-to-work issue late Monday afternoon.
Most of those testifying - 41 union members or officials - urged the committee to reject the proposal, but the panel voted 5-3 to side with the supporters and send the measure to the full Senate for debate, perhaps as early as this morning.
The testimony came on Rep. Eric Burlison's bill, which the House passed on Feb. 12 by a 91-64 margin.
Gov. Jay Nixon has promised to veto the bill if it clears the Legislature - and 92 votes is 17 short of the 109 needed to override that veto.
Burlison, R-Springfield, told the Senate committee Monday, "The issue of freedom to work is necessary if Missouri is going to gain a competitive standing, not only in the United States but globally.
"It will encourage job growth, make unions stronger for their members and promote individual freedom for workers across our great state."
Burlison said current Missouri law, which allows unions and employers to negotiate contracts requiring all employees to pay union dues - even if they don't join the union - has cost the state jobs because many employers won't consider locating in states that don't have right to work laws.
Those laws prohibit the employer from requiring a person to become a member of a labor organization as a condition of employment.
"The move, or migration, of Americans from "closed-shop' states like Missouri to freedom to work states is proof-positive of this fact," Burlison said. "It is part of the reason that nearly 5 million Americans have moved from the 24 states that do not allow this freedom to work choice to states that do allow the freedom to work."
From 2002-12, he added, Missouri's six neighboring states that have right-to-work laws - Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee - "saw their private-sector payroll increase by 3 percent, compared to a 1.6 percent decline in the state of Missouri."
But Mike Lewis of the Missouri AFL-CIO countered, "The comparisons of wages in right to work states and non-right to work states are always done on percentages. So, if you make $8 an hour and you get a 4 percent raise, you get 32 cents more.
"In Missouri, where people make a much better wage - $22 an hour - and you get a 3 percent increase, you get 66 cents more."
Overall, he said, comparing all right-to-work states with the non-right-to-work states, "Non-right-to-work states make $3.56 an hour more." And the numbers get bigger when benefits and pensions are included.
Greg Johns of the Missourians for Right to Work noted he supports the proposed law even though he was an AFL-CIO organizer for eight years.
"I believe a union is a thing to have," Johns told the committee. "Missourians must have the right to organize - but they should not be compelled to join.
"They should have their free agency to join."
In the last decade, he said, "We've lost 101,000 union members. In the last three years, we've lost 61,000 union members - not counting other workers."
Last year alone, Johns added, Indiana - which became a right-to-work state in 2012 - "gained 50,000 new union members, with good-paying jobs, plus 70,000 non-union members."
But, Sen. Kiki Curls, D-Kansas City, noted some of Missouri's job losses could be tied to the economy and beyond employees' control, with things like plant closings.
Many of those testifying against the bill noted unions spend substantial amounts of their own money on training programs and emphasizing safety issues - issues, the bill opponents argued, that are bigger problems in right-to-work states.
Shawn Hines recently graduated from Iowa State University, Ames, with a degree in construction engineering.
He worked construction jobs to pay for his schooling, he testified, "And the whole time I worked there, all I did was hear the guys gripe about their wages and benefits, and how they were getting constantly cut in order to cut costs."
After graduation, he was hired by an all-union, Kansas City-based, national contractor to be a superintendent-trainee, "And the way they're training me is by putting me through the union training," Hines said, "which just goes to show how valuable the union training is.
"They value that above my engineering degree, and above any training they can give me."
Burlison said several job locator companies have reported most businesses won't even consider moving to a state without a right-to-work law.
But several bill opponents told the committee that right to work is 10th - or lower - on their list of concerns, behind education, taxes and transportation.
Jeff Wright, with the United Auto Workers at Kansas City's Ford Plant, noted, with the recent expansion of the Claycomo plant, "We've hired over 3,000 people - and not a single person we hired was forced to come to work there."
They could have gone to the GM plant in nearby Kansas - a right-to-work state, he said.
"It would be a lot easier to find non-union jobs," Wright noted, but the people coming to the Missouri Ford plant said "they wanted a union job, with good pay and good benefits."