As I wait­ed out­side the AFL-CIO’s closed-door exec­u­tive coun­cil meet­ing on Tues­day at a hotel near Dis­ney World, I recalled a con­ver­sa­tion at anoth­er AFL-CIO meet­ing some 35 years ago. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ist leader of the machin­ists union, William ​“Wimpy” Win­pisinger, had called for retire­ment of the AFL-CIO’s aging, con­ser­v­a­tive pres­i­dent, George Meany, say­ing that labor was in cri­sis and need­ed to head in a new direc­tion. I approached the teach­ers union pres­i­dent, Albert Shanker, known as a feisty Cold War lib­er­al, to get his reac­tion. Wimpy was too impa­tient, Shanker said. The labor move­ment was like a bat­tle­ship. It takes time to turn it around.

The mood at the meeting, one AFL-CIO top staffer said, was that the future of the labor movement was at risk if they continued “business as usual.”

Who knew how long?

That old bat­tle­ship has tak­en many direct shells since then from a flotil­la of cor­po­rate war­ships, and it has lost about half its crew. It began notice­ably turn­ing in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion in 1995 when John Sweeney became pres­i­dent, but the AFL-CIO’ s inno­va­tion slowed in Sweeney’s lat­ter years, and dis­agree­ments about its direc­tion grew into a schism in 2005. Richard Trum­ka, Sweeney’s fel­low offi­cer and suc­ces­sor, has large­ly fol­lowed the estab­lished course, with refine­ments, in his first four-year term. But the cap­tains of the union ship still are try­ing to fig­ure out which turns, if any, will win this bat­tle. The mood at the meet­ing, one AFL-CIO top staffer said, was that the future of the labor move­ment was at risk if they con­tin­ued ​“busi­ness as usual.”

The strate­gies pro­posed at the meet­ing involve re-eval­u­at­ing and re-fram­ing labor’s mis­sion. Trum­ka and oth­er lead­ers hope to both draw strength from, and add heft to, the pro­gres­sive move­ment. While not entire­ly nov­el, the plans would move labor more out of its tra­di­tion­al insu­lar­i­ty and into greater sol­i­dar­i­ty — the orig­i­nal soul of orga­nized labor — not only with­in labor but also with oth­er pro­gres­sive groups.

Both Trum­ka and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers (CWA) Pres­i­dent Lar­ry Cohen, who heads the federation’s orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee, said on Tues­day that the goal was not just gain­ing new mem­bers or bet­ter con­tracts, impor­tant as they may be. Rather, Cohen said, labor would try to ​“con­nect the dots” among caus­es — such as immi­grant rights, work­er rights, cam­paign and vot­ing reform — to build a mass move­ment for a strong democ­ra­cy at work and in the pub­lic arena.

Both Trum­ka and Cohen empha­sized that the AFL-CIO must reflect the labor movement’s chang­ing shape, reach­ing beyond its core of legal­ly rec­og­nized unions to new forms of work­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion, like the 3.1 mil­lion-mem­ber Work­ing Amer­i­ca, work­ers’ cen­ters (up from a hand­ful to more than 200 in a few years), the OUR Wal­mart move­ment and non-union alliances of work­ers such as taxi dri­vers, domes­tic work­ers and food ser­vice workers.

As a first step, lead­ers from glob­al unions and var­i­ous pro­gres­sive groups will be involved with AFL-CIO and mem­ber union lead­ers in devel­op­ing a com­mon agen­da both before and dur­ing the federation’s qua­dren­ni­al con­ven­tion in September.

​“It’s about bring­ing all of our allies togeth­er to make them part of the process,” Trum­ka said. ​“It’s not about us say­ing, ​‘Here’s what we’ve got to do.’ The unprece­dent­ed part is this: in the past we looked inter­nal­ly. How do we change us? Now we’re look­ing exter­nal­ly as well — rank-and-file peo­ple, stu­dents, seniors, aca­d­e­mics, ask­ing what do we have to do for all of us to win?”

(Although Trum­ka did not lay out plans to do so, it would make sense to involve mem­bers of the unions direct­ly in this dis­cus­sion, not sole­ly through elect­ed representatives.)

Trum­ka also wants to change the federation’s inter­nal struc­tures, break­ing up the ​“silos” of sep­a­rate inter­ests with­in the labor move­ment. ​“The AFL-CIO devel­oped to pre­vent us from hurt­ing each oth­er, not to help each oth­er,” he notes.

But more con­ven­tion­al union pol­i­tics still trump some of these grand ambi­tions. As the exec­u­tive coun­cil dis­cussed its role in unit­ing with oth­er pro­gres­sive groups, it passed a res­o­lu­tion on ener­gy pipelines, sup­port­ing their gen­er­al util­i­ty and the need for bet­ter main­te­nance. Although the res­o­lu­tion did not men­tion the Key­stone XL pipeline from the Cana­di­an tar sands to the U.S. – opposed by most envi­ron­men­tal groups and some unions – the build­ing trades regard­ed the state­ment as sup­port­ing Keystone.

Empha­siz­ing the need for con­struc­tion jobs and sug­gest­ing that envi­ron­men­tal­ists are more con­cerned about min­ing the tar sands than any pipeline itself, Trum­ka said the res­o­lu­tion would make it pos­si­ble to endorse the pipeline once there was a con­crete pro­pos­al. For sev­er­al years under Sweeney, a group of unions tried to work out com­mon prin­ci­ples with envi­ron­men­tal­ists on glob­al warm­ing with­out suc­cess, and the Blue­Green Alliance and oth­er labor-envi­ron­ment ini­tia­tives per­se­vere. But the pipeline vote Tues­day sug­gests that there are — and will con­tin­ue to be — spe­cial inter­ests with­in labor as well as dif­fer­ences between unions and oth­er pro­gres­sive con­stituen­cies. Trumka’s plans may gen­er­ate more mutu­al under­stand­ing and more instances of coop­er­a­tion, but not like­ly a uni­fied pro­gres­sive movement.

The con­tin­ued decline of union mem­bers as a share of the work­force — down three-tenths of a point to 11.3 per­cent last year — undoubt­ed­ly con­tributed to a new seriousness.Much of orga­nized labor’s lost share of the work­force last year reflects heavy lay­offs in rel­a­tive­ly strong union sec­tors, espe­cial­ly pub­lic and man­u­fac­tur­ing work­ers, that dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly hit high­ly union­ized states like Michi­gan, Ohio, Wis­con­sin and New York, accord­ing to AFL-CIO chief econ­o­mist William Sprig­gs. And in most of those states, unions suf­fered direct polit­i­cal attacks

​“We’re cog­nizant of the state of affairs,” AFL-CIO orga­niz­ing direc­tor Eliz­a­beth Bunn said, ​“but we’re not demor­al­ized.” While orga­niz­ing has slowed, Bunn and Cohen said that it cer­tain­ly has not stopped: CWA has sev­er­al large cam­paigns and the Unit­ed Auto Work­ers are work­ing with what pres­i­dent Bob King described as a com­mu­ni­ty-led effort for work­er rights to a union at a Nis­san plant in Can­ton, Mis­sis­sip­pi. And last year, while most unions shrank, four AFL-CIO mem­bers — Unite Here, Nation­al Nurs­es Union, AFGE (fed­er­al employ­ees) and the Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Machin­ists — added more than 5,000 new work­ers each.

If labor is to sur­vive, one leg­isla­tive goal is para­mount: remov­ing the huge legal road­blocks to work­ers exer­cis­ing their right to orga­nize. Although right-wing Repub­li­can con­trol of the House pre­cludes any seri­ous effort at reform of labor laws, the AFL-CIO is work­ing on new ver­sion of the Employ­ee Free Choice Act that would go beyond the cur­rent focus on union elec­tions. The new pro­pos­al would reflect changes in the work­place and econ­o­my, Bunn said, such as the increased use of sub­con­trac­tors and out­sourc­ing. Many employ­ers use these arrange­ments to evade legal respon­si­bil­i­ty for work­ers, mak­ing union orga­niz­ing more difficult.

More imme­di­ate­ly, unions are mount­ing a cam­paign to pres­sure Oba­ma to nom­i­nate the full com­ple­ment of five mem­bers and one gen­er­al coun­sel to the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board (NLRB), the main labor law enforce­ment agency. In this, too, Repub­li­can road­blocks are like­ly. At the begin­ning of 2012, Repub­li­cans tried to block all NLRB appoint­ments, which would have essen­tial­ly stopped enforce­ment of labor law, as the Supreme Court has ruled that NLRB deci­sions by less than a three-mem­ber major­i­ty are invalid. Oba­ma cir­cum­vent­ed the block­age with two Jan­u­ary 2012 recess appoint­ments, but the those appoint­ments — and thus all sub­se­quent NLRB deci­sions — were inval­i­dat­ed by a D.C. Cir­cuit Court rul­ing Jan­u­ary that is cur­rent­ly being appealed.

Labor unions expect Democ­rats to use ​“all options” to force a Sen­ate vote on the nom­i­na­tions. ​“We will not sit back and watch” as Repub­li­cans try to block appoint­ments and ren­der the NLRB inef­fec­tive, Cohen said angri­ly at the meet­ing, thump­ing the table. If Democ­rats don’t pull out all stops, like Repub­li­cans did in 2005 to push through judi­cial appoint­ments, he says, ​“We will mobi­lize against Sen­ate Democ­rats like we’ve nev­er done before.”

Trum­ka argues that the labor move­ment must not sep­a­rate pol­i­tics, orga­niz­ing and oth­er activ­i­ties but must incor­po­rate ​“inno­va­tion and growth” into every dimen­sion of its work. The AFL-CIO has reformed its old field ser­vices staff now into a cam­paign staff, shift­ing from a busi­ness union ser­vic­ing mod­el to more of a move­ment-build­ing social union­ism engage­ment with union mem­bers and allies, for exam­ple. And Work­ing Amer­i­ca is try­ing to sup­port orga­niz­ing more as it expands its already well-proven polit­i­cal track record.

At the same time, Cohen argues, labor’s pri­ma­ry focus must be on democ­ra­tiz­ing Amer­i­ca, secur­ing rights for aver­age peo­ple at work and in pol­i­tics, build­ing their pow­er and rais­ing their stan­dards of liv­ing. ​“The sto­ry [about the decline of the union­ized share of the work­force] is not about the num­bers,” he said. ​“It’s about rights, rights of the 80 mil­lion of 125 mil­lion work­ers who are sup­posed to be sup­port­ed by the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board.” The Unit­ed States has fall­en far below oth­er indus­tri­al coun­tries in democ­ra­cy, rights and stan­dards of liv­ing, now look­ing more like Mex­i­co or Colombia.

With­out the peo­ple, resources and expe­ri­ence with col­lec­tive action that union mem­bers pro­vide, any new democ­ra­cy move­ment will be much weak­er. But with­out a new democ­ra­cy move­ment, unions may become only a memory.

CWA and UAW are In These Times spon­sors.