A.F.L.-C.I.O. Has Plan to Add Millions of Nonunion Members

Richard L. Trumka, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., has a bold plan to reverse organized labor’s long slide: let millions of nonunion workers - and perhaps environmental, immigrant and other advocacy groups - join the labor federation.

When the labor federation holds its convention in Los Angeles beginning on Sunday, he will ask its delegates for a green light to pursue these ambitious reforms. Needless to say, some within the labor movement view them as heretical.

Mr. Trumka says he believes that if unions are having a hard time increasing their ranks, they can at least restore their clout by building a broad coalition to advance a worker-friendly political and economic agenda. He has called for inviting millions of nonunion workers into the labor movement even if their own workplaces are not unionized. Not stopping there, he has proposed making progressive groups - like the NAACP; the Sierra Club; the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic civil rights group; and MomsRising, an advocacy group for women’s and family issues - either formal partners or affiliates of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.

“The crisis for labor has deepened,” Mr. Trumka said in an interview. “It’s at a point where we really must do something differently. We really have to experiment.”

By crisis, he means myriad setbacks, including a steady loss of union membership, frequent defeats in organizing drives and unions being forced to accept multiyear wage freezes. Not only have labor leaders faced the embarrassing enactment of anti-union legislation in onetime labor strongholds like Wisconsin and Michigan, but they could not even win passage of legislation making it easier to unionize when President Obama was elected and the Democrats controlled the House and Senate.

In language far different from decades past - when labor often talked with ‘we’ll get it done ourselves’ bravado - Mr. Trumka said: “It’s pretty obvious to all of our progressive partners that none of us can do it alone. If we’re going to change the political and economic environment, it’s going to take us all working together.”

Gary N. Chaison, an industrial relations professor at Clark University, said: “Unions are thrashing around looking for answers. It just might prove successful from the very fact that there is great desperation to it. There’s a sense that this is make-or-break time for labor. Either major things are done, or it will be too late to resuscitate the labor movement.”

Labor’s reinvention process is taking many forms. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. has set up a dozen committees - of historians, young workers, Web experts, pollsters - to propose ways to reinvent labor. Our Walmart, a union-backed group of Walmart employees, has held repeated protests in the hope of somehow finding pressure points to persuade the giant retailer to improve pay and benefits. The Service Employees International Union helped organize a wave of one-day strikes at fast-food restaurants to create a nationwide movement of low-wage workers with the aim of pressuring McDonald’s, Subway and other chains to raise wages.

“We’re trying a lot of things, and some of them will work and some of them won’t,” Mr. Trumka said. “We’ll try to amplify those that work, and we’ll jettison what doesn’t work.”

Unions have continued to look for new groups of workers to organize. In an unusual effort, the service employees union is seeking to organize all adjunct professors - an often low-paid group - in the Boston area. After several fruitless attempts, the United Automobile Workers has accelerated its efforts to organize automobile plants in the South, pushing hard at Nissan, Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz. In one creative approach to unionizing, the U.A.W. is working with VW to create a German-style works council at its plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. In anti-union Texas, a dozen unions are undertaking a decade-long organizing drive aimed at greatly increasing unionization there and helping turn Texas politics from red to blue.

But many liberals and union members worry that if unions grow weaker, that will lead to more income inequality and less of a political counterweight to corporate America and conservative billionaires.

“What makes this a moment of hope is there is a general recognition that things are out of balance in terms of inequality and wage stagnation,” said Craig Becker, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s general counsel. “You have to find a way to create or re-create vibrant worker organizations to address those problems.”

Underlying all this strategizing is a sense that if unions are ever to reverse their decline, they will have to somehow inspire Americans to engage in collective action again. “You can’t solve the problems of the labor movement or the progressive movement until you restore the belief in collective power,” said Karen Nussbaum, executive director of Working America, an A.F.L.-C.I.O. affiliate that mobilizes nonunion workers during elections.

In the mid-1990s, Mr. Trumka’s predecessor, John J. Sweeney, sought to rescue labor by pressing unions to organize far more workers. But that effort failed, because only a few unions threw serious resources into the effort - many did not think labor was in crisis. Moreover, many workers didn’t see an advantage to joining a union, and many employers have grown expert at beating back unionization drives.

Janice R. Fine, a labor relations professor at Rutgers, said today’s effort might prove more successful. “Everyone in labor is chastened by what’s been happening,” she said. “There’s a general understanding that something major needs to be done. There’s a sense that it’s five minutes to midnight.”

Mr. Trumka’s vision would bring millions more nonunion workers into the labor movement. They might help unions press employers to fix safety hazards, lobby state legislatures for a higher minimum wage and push Congress to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Mr. Trumka’s strategists have not decided whether these nonunion workers would or would not pay dues. If they are asked to pay dues, that would of course fatten struggling union treasuries.

A.F.L.-C.I.O. officials are asking themselves, when 49 percent of employees at a workplace vote to have a union - failing to win the majority needed to bargain collectively - why should unions turn their backs on that 49 percent? They say that 49 percent should be invited into the labor movement to, for example, lobby on pro-worker legislation or to get out the vote. They also say those workers should be able to avail themselves of some union benefits, like low-interest-rate credit cards or low-cost life insurance.

In recent months, Washington’s unions have worked with black ministers to fight foreclosures and find jobs for former prisoners. A Teamsters local is providing legal services and lobbying muscle to Seattle’s taxi drivers. Unions and MomsRising are pressing Tacoma’s City Council to enact a paid sick days law.

“Unions have cooperated closely with us,” said Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, co-founder of MomsRising, a Seattle-based group with 1.1 million members. “When policies that will help all workers are proposed, often everybody jumps in without having to do a lot of second-guessing because we’ve worked together and we trust each other.”

Unions and community groups have joined forces to try to create the nation’s highest minimum wage through a referendum in SeaTac, a community south of Seattle. The proposal would establish a $15-an-hour minimum wage - more than twice the $7.25-an-hour federal minimum - for 6,500 workers at Sea-Tac International Airport and its nearby hotels and car rental agencies. The $15 wage would be 63 percent higher than Washington’s $9.19-an-hour minimum, already the highest state minimum wage.

Business groups had persuaded a judge to throw the referendum off the November ballot because of invalid signatures, but late Friday a state court of appeals ordered the proposal back on the ballot. Labor groups hope the measure will be a model for other communities.

“Fifteen dollars an hour would really help - it would enable people to pay their bills on time and fix up their houses,” said Chris Smith, 49, a father of three who until recently worked a dangerous job fueling aircraft that paid $10 an hour. He quit that for a job at Walmart, figuring that if he was going to earn $10 an hour, it might as well be safer.

Gary T. Smith, who coordinates a business coalition, said the $15 proposal “goes too far and costs too much and will have too many unintended consequences,” including layoffs by small businesses at the airport.

The Rev. Jan Lyn Bolerjack of the Riverton Park United Methodist Church in Tukwila exemplifies the growing ties between labor and faith groups. She began to campaign for the $15 proposal after she saw many airport workers lining up at her church’s food bank. “It’s getting back to taking care of those who don’t have a voice and lifting up the least among us,” she said.