The AFL-CIO executive committee has come to Texas, setting its sights on what has been inhospitable terrain and betting workers in the state can be drawn to organized labor's efforts to raise wages.

Buoyed by the growth of the energy industry along the Gulf Coast and fortified with organizing wins at poultry plants and manufacturing parts makers, the heads of some of the nation's largest labor unions are meeting in Texas for the first time Tuesday and Wednesday at the Hilton Americas-Houston.

Members of the executive committee hope the labor federation can continue to notch victories across the South, either through traditional organizing or public campaigns to boost the minimum wage.

They are meeting in a city where, less than a decade ago, labor celebrated its first large-scale victory in a quarter-century when a union once affiliated with the AFL-CIO organized the janitors who clean the largest office buildings.

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., said the federation wants to send the message that the labor federation is expanding its horizons to new places and to new people.

"Our focus is on raising wages," Trumka said, claiming during a news conference Monday that "everyone from the pope to the president" is embracing the global efforts.

While unions have long represented thousands who work in the refineries and chemical plants along the Houston Ship Channel, along with the electricians, pipe fitters, welders and other craft workers who build the Houston skyline, union organizing has been sporadic. A win here was followed by a loss there.

Union leaders put the blame on such factors as Texas' status as a right-to-work state in which workers cannot be forced to join a union; the strong anti-union sentiment among many corporate and government leaders; and even a go-it-alone Texan culture.

Numbers down

The number of Texas workers belonging to unions fell to 518,000 last year from 599,000 in 2012, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported earlier this month.

Union members accounted for 4.8 percent of all Texas workers in 2013, down from 5.7 percent the year before. In addition, another 129,000 workers in Texas were represented by unions while not being labor union members themselves.

Combining those workers with union members, union-represented employees accounted for 6 percent of the wage and salary workforce in Texas. That compares with the national rate of 12.4 percent.

"Unions are having trouble convincing employees that joining a union is in their best interests," said A. Kevin Troutman, an employment lawyer with Fisher & Phillips in Houston who represents management in labor disputes.

"If there isn't some problem, some great dissatisfaction, most employees don't see a great need for someone to come in and speak on their behalf," he said. Long strikes and stories of corruption have made organizing even more difficult, he added.

Some of that momentum changed in 2005 when the Service Employees International Union scored the biggest organized labor victory Houston has seen in 25 years.

It started when the union, which is no longer affiliated with the AFL-CIO, moved its operation from a garage apartment in the Heights to an entire floor of a bank building on the edge of River Oaks and signed an 11-year lease.

The union was trying to establish a toehold in the South for its Justice for Janitors campaign and chose Houston, with its growing Latino population, as the most likely place to succeed.

Even armed with a neutrality agreement from the big janitorial companies that they wouldn't oppose a card-check campaign - which avoids a secret ballot election - it took the SEIU months to get a majority of the 4,700 janitors to sign cards saying they'd like to be represented.

While the drive was initially successful, the union had a much rougher time when it negotiated its labor agreements. Raises were small, and benefits were scant. During the most recent negotiation, some janitors lost their representation when the union shrunk the size of its geographic footprint.

The drive, however, created new excitement in Houston's labor movement and led to other successful campaigns, including the Teamsters' successful nationwide campaign in 2010 to organize 7,600 ramp workers for what was then Continental Airlines.

Seeking harmony

For a long time, there weren't a lot of warm feelings between the labor unions that represent the construction trades and the companies that drill the wells, provide the exploration and production services or run the refineries and chemical plants.

But Pipefitters Local Union 211 recently played host to Jack Gerard, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, along with other industry leaders.

Gerard, who came to Houston in September as part of a nationwide tour of apprenticeship training programs, estimated 500,000 jobs would be created along the Gulf Coast between 2013 and 2020. He's hoping to team up with the craft unions to train the skilled workers the industry needs.

Nationally, organizing efforts suffered a setback Friday when workers at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee voted down a proposal to be represented by the UAW. On Monday, Trumka dismissed the notion that the loss was a devastating blow.

"We came within an eyelash of winning," he said.

Trumka blamed the meddling of politicians who threatened the livelihoods of workers if they voted for union representation. What should have been a local decision by local workers turned into an example of the new form of "right-wing ferocity," he said.

"They're scared," he said, referring to the political leaders. And they should be, he added, as workers develop new forms of organizing.