Topeka ? Business interests and advocates for employees are squaring off for the legislative equivalent of a holy war over workers’ compensation and other issues.

After six months on the job, Kansas Chamber of Commerce and Industry leader Lew Ebert is touring the state telling folks that Kansas needs to reduce the cost of doing business to compete with other states and grow economically. Last week, he was in Lawrence blasting the city’s proposed living-wage ordinance.

When the legislative session starts in January, he said, the statewide chamber will push for passage of bills aimed at reducing the costs to businesses of health care, workers’ compensation, unemployment compensation, taxes and civil lawsuits.

“Other states that are serious about attracting business are taking steps to reduce their costs,” Ebert said. “Kansas cannot afford to allow other states to become more attractive to business if it wants to stay competitive.”

To implement a more aggressive business agenda in the Legislature, the Kansas chamber hired the Topeka-based lobbying firm of Gaches Braden Barbee & Associates.

But labor representatives and others say the chamber’s proposals to lower business costs will come at the expense of workers who already are struggling.

“We are not going to sit back and let this guy run rampant over the workers of the state of Kansas, which is obviously what he is trying to do,” said Jim Dehoff, executive secretary of the Kansas AFL-CIO. “He’s going to have a battle on his hands.”

The labor group, the Kansas Trial Lawyers Assn. and others — including advocates for the disabled, religious organizations and professional associations — have joined forces to take on the chamber.

“I think he (Ebert) is going to wake up a lot of people,” Dehoff said.

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Ebert cites a study by the U.S. Tax Foundation, which supports lower taxes, that said Kansas had the 15th worst tax climate among states under an index that measured business and personal taxes and the administrative complexity of the tax structure.

Ebert, who joined the Kansas chamber after 22 years with the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, noted successes in Mississippi and other southern states in luring auto plants and other major industries, while Kansas has not been in the running.

With Kansas’ high-ranking education system and superior road system, the state should be attracting more business, he said. And one way to do that is with legislation to reduce workers’ compensation claims, the chamber said.

A version of the chamber’s workers’ compensation bill died in the last legislative session after Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ administration came out against it.

Reducing workers’ compensation awards would be tragic, Dehoff said, because injured workers in Kansas already receive among the lowest amounts in compensation in the nation. Meanwhile, Kansas is one of the most dangerous states in which to work because of inadequate spending on work-safety initiatives, Dehoff said.

But Ebert said the proposed changes were similar to what several other states had adopted in response to business interests trying to spur economic growth.

“We’re responding to what our members need to have us do,” he said.