Dimondstein criticized the convention’s roster of speakers for not including worker-organizers from the Starbucks organizing drive or the Amazon Labor Union, which unionized an 8,300-employee Amazon warehouse in New York in a landmark victory. Neither the Starbucks union, Workers United, nor the Amazon Labor Union is in the AFL-CIO.

Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, said that historically the labor movement has grown only when young workers took the lead. “We’re not in a place where the AFL-CIO is going to take the lead on the strategy for the next generation,” she said. “That means we’re not doing enough.”

Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said he wasn’t so concerned about numerical goals as about “developing and strategizing an organizing program that is treated as a priority”. While there have been ad hoc efforts to help various drives, like the Amazon Labor Union’s, Saunders said, “when you go up against these multibillion organizations, you’re going to need a structure [perhaps a multi-union, cooperative effort] that’s going to help you handle it”.

Saunders added that if workers “win a campaign, corporations can file lawsuits and delay on negotiating a contract. You need a structure that can help battle that.”

Some labor leaders complained that Schuler’s 1 million plan was lowest common denominator unionism. But Shuler sees that plan as lifting the floor: unions that do lots of organizing can continue to do so, while this plan should get unions that do little organizing to commit to doing more.

Shuler announced the creation of the Center for Transformational Organizing, a group of strategists, organizers and researcher who will focus on how to unionize new-economy companies. “We have a visionary way forward,” Shuler said.

Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labour and the workplace.

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