Carter Wood, now responsible for all blogging for the National Association of Manufacturers reports that the cloture vote on the Employee Free Choice Act  is likely to take place on Thursday.  Mr. Wood notes: 

By most accounts, debate will be kept short since the outcome is all but certain -- the failure to gain the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture.

That's good on one hand, because the bill dies this session. It doesn't have to go to the President for his veto.

But it's bad, because a few Senators may justify a yea vote with the traditional excuse, "Well, no big deal, it's not going to pass anyway." Even so, once lawmakers go on the record with a yes vote, it's harder to change their minds in future years; labor's strategy is a multiyear one based on maintaining Democratic, pro-union majorities in both chambers and electing a Democratic president in 2008.

Early reports from Senate staffers suggested that the vote would take place after the Senate completed its work on the energy bill.  But, Jim Snyder of The Hill, reports that, because  the energy bill is taking longer than expected, so Senator Reid may not wait until work on that bill is done:

[D]ebate on the energy bill is likely to be interrupted by a vote on the Employee Free Choice Act, a measure that would make it easier to form a union. This effort, too, may fall victim to the filibuster.

Why would the Senate interrupt work on the energy bill to bring a doomed labor bill to a vote?  It may have something to do with the fact that the labor lobby had already orchestrated rallies for this week.  See HERE and HERE.