It has been a dispiriting year for organized labor. Unions contributed greatly to the reelection of Barack Obama and the Democrats’ retention of the Senate, but were punched in the gut before they could savor the victories. Michigan’s Republican legislature and governor rushed a bill through the lame-duck session, making the birthplace of the United Auto Workers a “right-to-work” state. The move has inspired conservative legislators in several other states to follow suit, raising the possibility that a majority of the 50 states will soon be right-to-work, allowing workers to opt out of paying dues to unions even as they benefit from union contracts, and thereby further weakening an institution that has seen its membership drop from a third of the private sector workforce 60 years ago to 7 percent today.

Few have fought harder to keep labor from this plight than Jerry Tucker. An outspoken dissident, Tucker urged an alternate course for American unions for more than three decades, one with a broader progressive message and greater empowerment of rank and file workers. Despite his repeated successes in the field of action, Tucker was largely sidelined by the union establishment. Labor could desperately use Tucker's guidance today, but it's too late: He died in his hometown of St. Louis on October 19 of pancreatic cancer, at age 73.

Still, with the movement he loved in such dire straits, it’s worth reckoning with him and his legacy to ask: Could it have been different? And might it yet be? Tucker, who was born in 1938, bridged worlds apart. A bearish and bearded man, his blue collar roots were impeccable: He was the son of a tool-and-die worker and got his start with the United Auto Workers doing factory work for General Motors and Carter Carburetor. But he was also an unapologetic intellectual. He got a degree from Southern Illinois University; spent some early years hanging around the Beat scene in San Francisco’s North Beach; and, in the final chapter of his career, gave a big speech at the Sorbonne.

“Jerry was in some ways the Lord Byron of our movement -- this deeply committed, eloquent activist and fighter who had this impact on everyone he came in contact with,” said Bill Fletcher, Jr. a fellow unionist, now with the American Federation of Government Employees, who knew Tucker for 20 years. Raised in a segregated city, Tucker married a black woman and was the only white player in St. Louis’ Negro Baseball Sandlot League. “I rarely thought of Jerry as a white guy, and I don’t say this just because he was married to an African-American woman,” Fletcher said. “The fight against racism was part of who Jerry was. He was always quite self-conscious, and I mean this in a good way, of the privileged status he has as a white male in our society.”

By the mid-‘70s, Tucker was working in the UAW’s Washington office, watching as the tide started to turn against labor. Deindustrialization was accelerating, the business lobby was gaining might, and, even with Jimmy Carter in the White House and Democrats in control of Congress, pro-union reforms of labor laws were watered down and ultimately defeated (by two votes in the Senate, as Carter stood by). Pro-management momentum grew stronger with the election of Ronald Reagan and his crushing of the air traffic-controllers union, prompting many labor leaders to drop back into the defensive, accommodationist posture that has prevailed for most of the years since.