But many of those vot­ers will not be wait­ing for the polit­i­cal can­di­dates’ respons­es to the con­tin­u­ing trend towards greater inequal­i­ty, which is part­ly a result of wages stag­nat­ing since the year 2000 while pro­duc­tiv­i­ty increased by 25 percent.

ATLANTA — The yard­stick labor unions — and poten­tial­ly a strong major­i­ty of Amer­i­can work­ing or mid­dle class vot­ers — will use to judge can­di­dates for pres­i­dent and low­er offices next year is sim­ple, said AFL-CIO pres­i­dent Richard Trum­ka at the win­ter meet­ing of the AFL-CIO exec­u­tive coun­cil on Mon­day: ​“What are you going to do to raise our wages?”

Trum­ka also expects — and indeed says he already sees — a spurt in col­lec­tive action that may not only win some of those wage increas­es but also add pres­sure to politi­cians of both par­ties, who are still fig­ur­ing out what they want to say on inequality.

“Col­lec­tive action is pow­er­ful, and it real­ly must be at the heart of the grow­ing dis­cus­sion about the econ­o­my and about rais­ing wages,” Trum­ka said at the coun­cil’s open­ing meet­ing on Monday.

Some effects of col­lec­tive action were on dis­play last week, as Wal­mart work­ers’ con­tin­ued pres­sure on their employ­er con­tributed to a mod­est but his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant wage increase; the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers and Elec­tri­cal Work­ers (IBEW) set­tled a huge strike for a new con­tract with Fair­Point; and the Steel­work­ers made health and safe­ty of work­ers and the pub­lic key parts of their demands in the recent nation­wide oil strike. (Trum­ka could have added dock and long­shore work­ers who were embroiled in a bat­tle on the Pacif­ic coast until late last week.) And he empha­sized that 5 mil­lion AFL-CIO union mem­bers will be nego­ti­at­ing new con­tracts next year, includ­ing city, state and coun­ty work­ers, auto work­ers, flight atten­dants, gro­cery clerks and others.

The bat­tle over who should have greater pow­er to shape the econ­o­my and work­ers’ lives is both polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic, with con­se­quences deter­mined by col­lec­tive action on both fronts. Last year, real wages fell for near­ly every tenth of the work­force except the bot­tom tenth, accord­ing to a new study from the Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, and that increase large­ly reflects increas­es in the min­i­mum wage in many states through action in leg­is­la­tures or direct vot­er referenda.

Unions will be stress­ing the links between eco­nom­ics and pol­i­tics this year, per­haps more than usu­al. The AFL-CIO has trained 1,500 peo­ple to serve as pop­u­lar edu­ca­tors, using its ​“Com­mon Sense Eco­nom­ics” pro­gram. In part, Trum­ka said, it teach­es that ​“elec­tions have con­se­quences. The econ­o­my is noth­ing but a set of rules made by elect­ed offi­cials, and we can elect peo­ple who can change the rules.”

In a res­o­lu­tion approved on Mon­day, the exec­u­tive coun­cil spoke out strong­ly for pro­tect­ing the Dodd-Frank bank­ing reg­u­la­tions now under attack by the Right and for push­ing for reg­u­la­tion that would ​“make bank­ing bor­ing again” — that is, elim­i­nat­ing much of the high-risk finan­cial ​“inno­va­tions” that enriched Wall Street and desta­bi­lized the econ­o­my in 2008. Such reg­u­la­tions can also make it more like­ly that the share of the econ­o­my going to Wall Street traders will go to ordi­nary work­ing peo­ple instead.

In the last nation­al elec­tion, accord­ing to an AFL-CIO-spon­sored poll that Trum­ka cit­ed, 57 per­cent of vot­ers said their wages had fall­en, and 34 per­cent said they had been flat in recent years. Per­haps it is not sur­pris­ing that in direct ref­er­en­dum votes, every pro­pos­al for min­i­mum wage increas­es or pro­vi­sion of paid sick days passed. It is also not sur­pris­ing that the vot­ers in the same poll saw Democ­rats as hav­ing no coher­ent eco­nom­ic mes­sage. As a result, the par­ty fared poorly.

Trum­ka also took inspi­ra­tion from signs of life in tra­di­tion­al union orga­niz­ing activ­i­ty, such as among taxi dri­vers, and more dif­fuse but potent efforts such as the fast food work­ers fight for a $15 wage and a union and OUR Walmart.

“Col­lec­tive action in the coun­try is on the rise,” he said. ​“Peo­ple who don’t even know what unions are, are say­ing, How do we get togeth­er to raise our wages?”

But the right-wing legal and polit­i­cal assault of recent years on work­er rights con­tin­ues. Unions and work­ers face a wave of new pro­pos­als for state ​“right-to-work” laws, such as the leg­is­la­tion sched­uled for a vote in Wis­con­sin this week. Those pro­pos­als, now cov­er­ing near­ly half of all states, pro­hib­it union con­tracts from requir­ing non-mem­bers to pay a fee to cov­er union expens­es of rep­re­sent­ing them. On the basis of expe­ri­ence in oth­er states, that type of leg­is­la­tion is unlike­ly to gen­er­ate the new jobs spon­sors promise. But it is like­ly to weak­en unions and increase cor­po­rate pow­er, if only by mak­ing it hard­er for unions to col­lect dues.

“Every­body knows cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca is too strong, not too weak,” Trum­ka said. ​“These laws strength­en cor­po­ra­tions, and where you make them stronger, you get more wage inequal­i­ty, less pen­sions, and less health care.”

Labor’s ene­mies at work and in pol­i­tics have longed used every divi­sion among work­ers as a wedge to break up the sol­i­dar­i­ty that ulti­mate­ly pro­vides the labor move­ment its strength. ​“Our job is to pre­vent them from divid­ing us [arti­fi­cial­ly] as they have for the last sev­er­al decades,” Trum­ka said.

In response, unions have been try­ing to strength­en their rela­tion­ship with allies, aim­ing, as Trum­ka said, to make their issues ​“our issues,” not sim­ply rou­tine for­mal­i­ties. Per­haps most impor­tant is the con­tin­ued push for com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform and the resis­tance to bare­ly con­cealed, sub­lim­i­nal racism described as ​“dog whis­tle pol­i­tics” by a guest speak­er to the exec­u­tive coun­cil, legal schol­ar Ian Haney Lopez.

Besides edu­cat­ing its own mem­bers, the AFL-CIO wants to edu­cate the gen­er­al elec­torate and, in par­tic­u­lar, can­di­dates from both major par­ties for pres­i­den­tial and less­er offices. Fol­low­ing a mod­el con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton ear­li­er this year on rais­ing wages, the labor fed­er­a­tion will hold sim­i­lar forums in the ear­ly pri­ma­ry or cau­cus states — Iowa, New Hamp­shire, South Car­oli­na and Neva­da — that try to force can­di­dates from both par­ties to address the need for high­er wages.

It may be a tougher chal­lenge than the facts of eco­nom­ic life and polling of vot­ers would sug­gest. Repub­li­cans can large­ly be count­ed on pro­vid­ing a coher­ent, if false, promise: Cut tax­es and gov­ern­ment, and you’ll have more mon­ey. Democ­rats are like­ly to embrace at least a mod­est increase in the min­i­mum wage, but all bets are off after that, except for a polit­i­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly wrong-head­ed empha­sis on every­one get­ting more edu­ca­tion.

It seems that Democ­rats have been los­ing elec­tions on an all-too-reg­u­lar basis despite the trou­bled con­di­tions of life and frus­trat­ed, angry out­look of a major­i­ty of vot­ers who have good rea­son to reject the Repub­li­can mes­sage. But they are either so dis­tant from those vot­ers, so afraid of many sol­id pro­gres­sive pol­i­cy alter­na­tives (or of the attacks that Repub­li­cans mount against them) or so plugged into cor­po­rate sources of fund­ing that they are afraid to take a coher­ent approach that could work both as pol­i­tics and policy.

Labor unions and their allies will have their work cut out for them in an attempt to get Democ­rats across the board to adopt their approach. But Trum­ka is right in see­ing an upris­ing of col­lec­tive action as a cru­cial way of bring­ing the mes­sage home: work­ing peo­ple deserve both a raise — and greater pow­er in deter­min­ing the kind of soci­ety they live in.