As the woes of the U.S. auto industry demonstrate, American unions are being forced to adapt to a new era of globalization that presents its own set of perils and opportunities. What’s more, the Employee Free Choice Act -- and the recession -- could change everything.

Unions have struggled to adapt to an increasingly global economy, where workers in other countries willing to take far lower wages and benefits, thus often allowing those goods to be sold at lower prices.

Union membership has been on the decline for decades, a phenomenon largely attributed to the decline of manufacturing, where unions had such a large presence. Pro-union people argue that labor laws skewed heavily against unions have contributed as well, while anti-union forces maintain that unions are nearly obsolete in an era when the federal government itself protects worker safety, equal opportunity, family and medical leave, and more.

The Employee Free Choice Act, one of the most controversial labor proposals in years, may come to the table early in the Obama administration and could give unions a big boost if it’s passed.

And everyone following the vote agrees it’s going to be extremely close.

“It’s going to be by one vote either way,” predicted Justin Wilson, managing director at the Center for Union Facts, a group that opposes the EFCA and other union-oriented initiatives.

Basically, the EFCA aims to give unions more power in their dealings with employers. It makes it much easier to organize workers at a company, in addition to providing mediation and arbitration for some types of disputes and instituting heavier penalties on companies for violating worker rights with they try to organize.

“Labor law has become skewed heavily against workers’ right to bargain collectively,” said Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC-Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education. “Employers have found mechanisms to make it extremely difficult to unionize.”

There’s a lot more information on the EFCA online, with perspective from places such as the union group AFL-CIO and the Center for Union Facts.

What’s more, with the U.S. economy in a full-blown recession, unions stand to gain, at least in some ways. They’ve made strides in sectors such as education, government and health care, which are traditionally some of the most recession-resistant.

However, the unions could be victims of their own success during the downturn, as well. Unions often have very exact job duties and other criteria spelled out for their workers, which reduce companies’ flexibility. Since recessionary times are when employers most need to be flexible and react quickly to changing conditions, unions could hurt their ability to survive through the recession.

“One of the problems unions tend to have tends to be the work rules” because employers might not be able to move people around to the jobs it might need more at a given time, said Randal Johnson, a vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a business-advocacy organization.

The AFL-CIO, AFSCME and AFT, all major unions groups, did not return requests for comment for this article.

Also, unions tend to oppose free-trade agreements, or at least advocate limits on them.

“If they pursue that during a recession, it’s the kind of thing that could give us a depression,” said Kevin Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank with a free-market and limited-government orientation.

“The current crop of union leaders does not understand that they cannot hold out to the point of putting companies out of business if they want to maintain jobs for their members,” said Center for Union Facts’ Wilson.

But, if unions simply help a greater percentage of the population to share in America’s wealth, it could help the economy recover faster.

“In order to have sustainable consumer demand, productivity has to be seen in people’s paychecks,” Jacobs of UC-Berkeley said. “Having stronger unions in America would help strengthen the middle class and help ensure that productivity increases translate into increases in wage and benefit growth.”

“In that way,” Jacobs added, unions “create a platform for more sustainable growth” in the economy.

Unions are also toying with another long-term growth plan -- international cooperation. If more companies, including those in competitor countries in Europe, Asia and elsewhere, have to give workers higher pay and benefits, the competitive edge in less unionized countries would begin to disappear.

At least one major U.S. union has made a go at this -- the United Steelworkers Union, which joined Workers Uniting, a union group that now has a presence in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Ireland.

Workers Uniting calls itself “the world’s first global union,” but there are major obstacles to the international efforts, as many American trade groups have found already. Wages, customs, economies and laws are so varied among countries around the globe that it’s extremely difficult to come up with any sort of standard practice.

“They’ve talked about that for years, and I’ve never seen any effect on labor relations in the United States, Johnson of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said. “I think the unions threw a lot of money down the drain on that.”

One of the big challenges is that real results would probably require participation from developing countries in places such as Asia, South America and Africa, where wages and benefits are much lower.

“It’s not an easy process,” but international cooperation is “starting to happen,” Jacobs said. Still, it’s not yet “on the scale that’s needed to level the playing field in a globalized world.”