America s leading union federation, the AFL-CIO, just elevated longtime Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka to its presidency, providing hope that organized labor will finally get the breath of fresh air it has needed for many years.

To reverse labor s slow descent into irrelevance will require a bold shift by Trumka, ironically perhaps, back to trade unionism s first principles, including advocacy of "bread and butter" improvements in pay and working conditions and support for workers abroad.

In the late 19th century, Samuel Gompers, the AFL s socialist founder, combined a promise of better pay, shorter hours and safer working conditions with organizational innovation to find common ground among millions of workers in a wide range of trades, industries and professions.

Gompers combined his domestic agenda with the creation in 1919 of the International Labor Organization to block a race to the bottom in labor standards during the first wave of what we now call "globalization." Trumka needs to rally today s diverse work force around a similar "bread and butter" stand against the downward slide in pay, working conditions and overall social security.

And, perhaps surprisingly, he must rally solid support in America for democratic rights and better pay and working conditions for the billion or so workers who now have joined America in the global economy, in countries such as China, Mexico, Turkey and Vietnam. Indeed, if trade unions cannot stand together across national borders for their common goals, workers will remain set against each other in a senseless downward spiral that only weakens the global economy.

Today, Trumka leads one of the AFLCIO s most successful new programs, its capital markets strategy, which leverages workers pension fund assets to lobby for sorely needed improvements in corporate governance and social responsibility.

But can Trumka translate that experience into a viable program that pumps life into the entire AFL-CIO? Unfortunately, Trumka s subdued acceptance speech offered little sign of his larger plans. Instead, he used the spotlight to backtrack on health care—slipping away from the AFL-CIO s support for a "single payer" — and persisted in his call for "card check" as a substitute for traditional union elections by secret ballot.

The success of his predecessor Gompers, whose approach made labor a mass movement with real independent power for the first time in American history, offers a compelling alternative.

When asked what labor wanted, Gompers famously quipped "More" — that is, more schools, fewer prisons; more books, fewer arsenals; more learning, less vice; more leisure, less greed; more justice, less revenge.

Not a bad place for Trumka to start labor s revival.

Stephen F. Diamond is an associate professor of law at Santa Clara University s School of Law.