Pity the poor American worker.

Union and other labor leaders in the country are desperately trying to find a way to resurrect the power of the people in the workplace and trying to rescue it from the sharp decline that started about 40 years ago.

At that time in the U.S.,the position of the middle class started its downward slide. It was slow enough, though, that many of them didn’t see what was happening, at least not right away.

A recent union publication pointed out “89 out of 100 workers don’t have collective bargaining.” That means 89 percent of workers are not represented by a union and it means they don’t have much power in the workplace.

For those who are concerned about the health of the U.S. economy, that statistic alone should reveal that there is no hyperbole in “gloom and doom” economic forecasting. That’s because there actually is gloom and doom and it’s a pall that has settled over American workers. The numbers say that only 11 percent of American workers are union members and, in the private sector, there are predictions that the percentage of unionized workers, now at about 7 percent, is heading toward 5 percent.

Why should anyone care? Well, there are people who care about this on a theoretical level (economists and some politicians), but there are some 155 million workers (including the unemployed) who are very concerned at a very personal level. They care very much about their families and their communities and, although they might not think of it in terms of having a union to represent them and support them and ensure them a decent standard of living, what they do know is that they are dropping inexorably to the lower rungs of the economic ladder and all that that implies.

They know that they, along with other workers, have not only been standing still in wages, but they have slipped backward and there is no sign that this condition will improve anytime soon. In numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) that everyone can understand, it is clear that wages, despite productivity gains, have been reduced over the past four decades.

According to BLS numbers, the real (current dollars) weekly average wage in 1947 was $462, and that number rose steadily over the next 20 years, until it was $731 a week in 1971. Ever since, however, the real wage has dropped, until, in 2010, it stood at $637, nearly $100 less than the average workers was earning in 1971. During all those years, productivity has increased steadily and, if wages had increased along with productivity, the average American worker would be making $1,183 a week.

This has happened to workers across the board in the U.S. and the main reason is that most workers have not had a union to represent them in the workplace and demand a share in the much-increased productivity. That’s what unions do: provide a voice in the workplace, demanding a just share of what they produce, provide a measure of justice in discipline and promotion, provide for equity in treatment regardless of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. They do more, but that is at the core of the function of a union.

Not surprisingly, the decline in real wages over the past 40 years has occurred at about the same rate as the growth of the disparity in wealth. In 2007, the richest 1 percent of Americans owned 34.6 percent of the country’s total wealth, according to Senior Scholar Edward N. Wolff, professor of economics at New York University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In that same year, the top 20 percent of Americans owned 85 percent of the wealth and the bottom 80 percent owned just 15 percent of the nation’s wealth. The distinction between income disparity and wealth disparity is significant, but wealth disparity measures the amount of holdings (homes, vacation properties, large investment portfolios, airplanes, real estate, for example), and the disparity in wealth remains severe, more than most other developed countries.

Unions mitigated that disparity for the first few decades after World War II, but the forces of capital already had launched a virtual war against workers and their unions, even against the very idea of unions. At the same time, Corporate America and their CEOs (in the old days, they were called “Robber Barons”) were busily funding right wing think tanks and buying up news outlets, to blanket the country with anti-union propaganda. Especially, they were busy influencing the children and young students by placing their pamphlets and other propaganda widely in schools, colleges, and universities. They heavily influenced the writing of textbooks and funded “chairs” or entire departments in universities, again with the intention of having a say in how subjects are taught and monitoring the outcomes in subtle, but effective ways. They still do and it’s not always subtle.

The AFL-CIO, one of two labor federations in the country, is attempting to turn this behemoth around, but it is fighting the incredible power of combined capital, manifested by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the American Legislative Exchange Council, to name a few. It plans to address it at the annual convention later this year. In preparation, it appointed earlier this year committees of workers and union leaders to formulate ways to increase both membership in unions and the power of workers at the bargaining table.

Any plan that organized labor comes up with will have to be a much broader effort than has been traditional for the past 50 years or so. Time and again, both local and national union leaders have said, in effect, “we’re going to stick to wages, benefits, and working conditions…we want our dues money to be spent on our members only.” That has been and will continue to be the dirge of the unions and the movement.

In the old days, before collective bargaining laws and the dues checkoff, unions were more of a social movement than they have been since World War II. They tended to address the needs of workers and their families where they lived and were concerned about life in their communities. So, while they demanded living wages and better working conditions, they also took care of the sick and buried the dead. It has been a long time since leaders of unions have thought in those terms.

Today’s unions must broaden their scope to include issues of war and peace, economic justice for all (union or not), saving what is left of the natural environment, the creation of a just and holistic food system, and, perhaps most important of all, a full frontal defense against the power of Corporate America, which has assumed control over the years of greater and greater portions of our lives.

In all of these things just mentioned, organized labor has been divided for a long time. Take for example the Vietnam War…it was a classic division between the “hard hats” and those unions that had a broader political view of the world. Today, issues like the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to Texas, separate one group of unions from another. Even when there is some rational debate, afterwards there remains disunity and that is the face shown to the people.

The power of Corporate America is that, although they repeat the mantra “competition,” there is no competition among them when it comes to the job of keeping workers in their place and driving down wages and living standards. They are of one mind about this and they have succeeded and they believe that they will continue to win this war they have declared against a seemingly defenseless populace. Their concern is not to “promote the general welfare,” as called for in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, but to promote their own welfare and to ensure that they have as little competition from the people as possible toward that end. In this, they have succeeded beyond their own dreams.

To recover, survive, and bring the benefits of national unity to the people, organized labor has a monumental job ahead. It needs to counter the colossal amount of money and power that is arrayed in front of them. The union movement needs to teach the people that they are the 99 percent and that the 1 percent is what is standing in the way of bringing change to a country that is in desperate need of reinventing itself, to achieve what has eluded us so far: equality, justice, fairness, a decent standard of living for all, and a conserved and protected environment in which to work and live.

Anything short of this will see the American founders’ goal of a fair and just society fade away.