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DESPERATE TO REVERSE ITS STEEP decline, American labor has embarked on a new strategy to concentrate power in its high command. The plan could make organizing efforts in factories and offices more effective by ending competition among AFL-CIO affiliates to unionize the same group of workers.

Until now, labor unions have often wasted enormous amounts of money and effort fighting among themselves for new member.In Ohio last year, 11 unions spent more than $15 million battling one another to represent 41,000 public employees. Each year, unions feud among themselves to organize workers at about 150 privately owned companies. "Unions have talked it over, and if they couldn't agree on who could organize what, they have slugged it out," says Charles McDonald, the AFL-CIO director of organizing. As a result, says Ray Abernathy, a consultant to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), "it's expensive and it sours the potential members," who may then veto all the unions seeking to represent them.

To halt the slide in union membership, the AFL-CIO Executive Counsel is taking more responsibility for its 93 affiliates. Now if two or more unions clash over organizing the same workers, they can submit their dispute to a mediator picked by the federation. Should mediation fail, the matter goes to an AFL-CIO umpire. The unions must abide by the umpire's ruling or face sanctions.

The new policy is a startling departure from union autonomy established a century ago by the AFL's first president, Samuel Gompers. But labor's declining fortunes -- unions represent one in five U.S. workers, compared with one in three 30 years ago -- are forcing today's labor chiefs to take a new look. "I think people are willing to give up some of their own prerogatives to see some gains important for us all," says Karen Nussbaum, an SEIU district president.

Will the strategy produce significant union gains? Labor watchers aren't sure. Says John T. Dunlop, a Harvard University professor, "It can make a contribution to either increase the extent of organizing or reduce the cost of organizing so that resources are available for other purposes."