While attacks on our trade union rights in Britain are tightening the screw nationwide, comrades across the pond are in a similarly tough predicament.

The US's basic labour law was enshrined in the National Labour Relations Act of 1935, which enabled workers to establish the US labour movement.

However last week the US federation of labour organisations, its equivalent of the TUC, said in a bold resolution at its convention that the Act "no longer fulfils its promise to US workers."

The AFL-CIO says the US no longer obeys its own law encouraging workers to collectively bargain, self-organise and exercise their other freedoms, and therefore it must be reformed.

The resolution, which was passed at congress, said that "as the economy evolved and employer opposition became more virulent and sophisticated while the law stood still, that progress stalled and then reversed."

It continued: "Federal labour law no longer fits the economy, the employment relationship or the workplace, and after almost 80 years of practice, employers, aided by ... a multibillion-dollar industry of 'union-avoidance' consultants, have nearly perfected the subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle exercise of the very economic power the Act was designed to counterbalance."

The labour movement has had a solution in mind for the past 10 years - the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow workers to form a union as soon as the majority at a workplace signed cards indicating that this was their desire.

Once a majority signed the cards, the union would automatically be in place at the workplace. There would be no need for a union election, which allows employers to fire pro-union workers after their pre-election activity thrusts them into the spotlight.

From the beginning, the EFCA has been blocked, filibustered and opposed by Republicans and even conservative Democrats.

"Labour law reform should remedy employers' increasingly sophisticated and well-funded evasion of the intent of the original Act to redress 'inequality of bargaining power' and also the growing misfit between the NLRA and the modern economy and employment relationship," said the resolution.

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka drove the point home during his rousing keynote address at the convention, remarking: "Here's the truth we live every day: we work harder, we work longer hours, we create more - more goods, more services, more of everything - and yet most of us earn less.

"Less than we earned five years ago. Less than we earned 15 years ago. Barely more than we earned 35 years ago.

"Our biggest employers - Walmart, McDonald's - their whole business model is about keeping the people who work for them poor. And Wall Street cheers them on."

Drawing lessons from the EFCA battle, and the emerging new struggles and forms of organising, the labour movement has concluded that instead of a single-issue labour law struggle, a comprehensive fight for broad-based labour law reform can draw wider allies into a winning movement.

The convention's decision to unite with workers and organisations outside of unions is widely seen here as key in this struggle.

Following this train of thought, the resolution stated, "The AFL-CIO and affiliated unions, together with a broad coalition of progressive allies, must embark on a multi-year political and legislative campaign to obtain fundamental changes in our nation's labour laws."

This campaign should be "founded on the principle that vibrant organisations of working people and electoral and governance reforms are both critical components of economic prosperity and a democratic revival in the United States," the federation said. "The former cannot be realised without the latter."

The resolution "urges the introduction of a labour law reform Bill in Congress as soon as possible to address the failures of the current law.

"The reforms should speak to the critical place of labour organisation and collective bargaining in redressing growing income inequality and the resulting imbalance in our political system.

"The reforms should ensure that all workers have the right to organise and engage in collective bargaining," it said.

"The protections of labour law should extend to:

n Employees who lack significant supervisory authority

n Workers who have been classified as independent contractors but who have no real economic independence from the employers they serve

n All government workers and all agricultural workers."

Responding to the attacks on public worker rights in Wisconsin, Michigan and other states, and the exclusion of agricultural workers from labour law protection, the resolution said overhauled labour law must ensure that "public safety personnel and others who serve the public and those who labour in the fields" are no longer "treated as second-class citizens when it comes to their workplace rights."

Reform at the federal level should be coupled with reform at state and local levels to ensure this comprehensive coverage, the resolution said.

"The reforms should not simply reaffirm a right to representation and to work under a collectively bargained agreement that is never realised by the vast majority of US workers."

Instead, it should "expressly encourage the exercise of that right and include sufficiently strong substantive changes to make the right meaningful and real for all workers."

This is an edited version of an article that appeared at Peoplesworld.org