When the media talks about "labour," people think about unions.

This year, however, in the United States and increasingly in the developed world, organised labour joined with community, civil rights and other organisations and, together, they fashioned themselves into a new movement.

US union confederation the AFL-CIO, after months of discussions in town-hall meetings and online, opened the ranks of organised labour itself to every single worker in the United States, regardless of their place of employment or current or past status as a union member.

It was a matter of survival. Only by reaching out, union leaders argue, will labour be able to beat back the unprecedented wave of attacks against it and give workers the clout they need to fight for living wages, safe working conditions, health care and a decent life while at work and in retirement.

In 2013, poll after poll showed that the clear majority of US citizens see the wealth gap as the big problem facing the nation.

The idea that the 1 per cent are crushing the 99 per cent moved beyond the Occupy Wall Street protesters who first popularised it to become a majority view.

Unions took that idea into the AFL-CIO's convention in September and staked out new ground in their struggle to reverse a situation in which just one of every eight workers in the US is unionised.

"We can't do it alone," AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said when he accepted his re-election as the federation's president.

"Tonight in America," Trumka said, "a child will be going to sleep with a stomach growling with hunger, with an immigrant parent sitting behind bars waiting to be deported, or with a father who is falling out of the middle class and a mother who is struggling as a minimum wage earner.

"The question is: 'Who will speak for them?' The answer is: 'We will'."

The AFL-CIO's executive council will meet in Texas in February to hammer out specific ways in which organisations outside the traditional labour movement can formally be integrated into the federation.

This has to be done, Trumka said at the convention, because the times call for bringing unions, the organised, the unrepresented and the unorganised together in one "mass movement."

"So what's the big deal?" some asked after the convention. "Labour has always worked together with other organisations."

The difference this time, the union leaders say, is that they intend to keep the coalition together on a permanent basis.

Even the temporary alliances labour has formed recently have lasted longer and have had more success than many alliances formed in the past. A good example is the Democracy Initiative formed this year by the Communications Workers of America (CWA).

No less than 51 organisations were brought together under its umbrella. The movement eventually forced the US Senate to overcome Republican party filibusters and confirm a full five-member National Labour Relations Board.

Rather than dissolving itself the Democracy Initiative continued to apply pressure and recently won another victory by convincing Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid to get rid of the 60-vote requirement to override filibusters against executive branch nominees, as well as judges up to the level of federal district and appeals courts.

"We're going to continue pushing until the right wing is unable to filibuster anything," says CWA president Larry Cohen.

The recent "fast for families" on Capitol Hill, the dramatic event led by former Service Employees International Union secretary-treasurer Eliseo Medina, was only one part of labour's involvement in an ongoing fight for immigration reform in 2013.

Major progress was evident with the Senate's passage of a Bill providing a 13-year path to citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people.

The measure, although far from perfect, would also bring all who register for "blue cards" as provisional immigrants under the protection of US labour law.

Unions see this as beneficial for the entire workforce because it would decrease the ability of employers to exploit any of their workers.

The Republican-controlled house of representatives put the brakes on everything, however, by refusing to even consider comprehensive immigration reform this year.

On another front the nation saw a major rising up of its low-wage workers in 2013, with people at fast-food outlets staging actions all across the country.

Walmart alone had to deal with 1,500 walkouts while fast-food places dealt with strikes in almost all major cities.

The workers demanded $15 (£9.15) an hour, respect on the job and the right to organise.

The labour movement and its allies also spent an unprecedented amount of time in 2013 exposing a variety of right-wing schemes designed to weaken worker power in the US.

Thousands choked the streets of Chicago as they marched on a secretive meeting of the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council.

Across the country unions and their allies campaigned against so-called voter ID laws, exposing their racist intent and building support for overturning them.

And unions and their allies fought hard against the push by right-wing lawmakers to put in so-called right-to-work laws.

In places like Detroit they have been battling the efforts of Republican governors and lawmakers to override the authority of democratically elected local officials.

Unions say they will be mounting full-scale fights to support local authorities when those authorities are looking out for the interests of workers.

Numerous cities and towns, for example, have instituted minimum wage laws higher than the $7.25 (£4.45) provided by the federal government.

Republican lawmakers are beginning to push state laws that would override these decisions and labour says it is ready to do battle on the issue.

Unions and their allies were also vital, this year, in ending the Tea Party-provoked government shutdown.

However they were not able to overcome stony Republican opposition to extending unemployment insurance which is expiring, thus leaving the nation's jobless out in the cold.

As the year ends millions of workers, their unions and others are taking time out to make the holidays a good time for those jobless and the rest of the 99 per cent who are most in need.

Thousands of children whose parents are out of work are the object of special efforts this time of year.

Unions in Oregon, for example, got together this week with the community services groups that joined them at the AFL-CIO convention last autumn and sponsored one of many events at the Sheet Metal Workers Local 16 union hall.

The children got hand-made stockings from Oregon's American Federation of Teachers. Everyone got a turkey lunch and pudding made by members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union.

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and a variety of community groups sponsored the Santa Claus, face-painting and bags full of gifts. A second pile of gifts was given out to the unemployed parents.

2013 was a tough year for labour and its allies and it looks like 2014 will be another tough one.

As the people in Oregon proved this week, however, workers and their friends never seem to lose their spirit.

This article appeared in People's World