They came to Pittsburgh, heard a host of speeches, elected new officers and passed a raft of resolutions, but did last month's National AFL-CIO Convention in Pittsburgh really accomplish anything?

William Samuel, the director of government affairs for the AFL-CIO, said resolutions passed by the delegates every four years at the National Convention lay down the Federation's priorities.

While one huge goal is reaching out to young, potential Union Members, the delegates also waved signs in support of the Employee Free Choice Act and Universal Health Care, and passed resolutions in favor of growing a Green Economy, pushing the Federal Aviation Administration to enhance the minimum safety standards for helicopters and repealing U.S. travel restrictions to Cuba.  They also called for high-quality public education.

The delegates also voted to increase diversity in their ranks - including people who identify as gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or transgendered and people with disabilities.  On the first day of the convention, Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers and head of the credentials committee, reported 46% of the delegates were women or people of color.

But as nice as that statistic was, there also was a very real sense in the room of the aging of the Labor Movement.  A vast majority of the people in the convention center either had gray or thinning hair.  Therefore, much of the talk was about reaching out to young people and getting them to join Organized Labor.

"We need a Unionism that makes sense to the next generation - young women and men who either don't have the money to go to college or are almost penniless by the time they come out," Richard Trumka said in his acceptance speech after he was elected president to succeed the retiring John Sweeney.

When young people do get a job, he said, they work for low wages as temporary workers, contractors or telecommuters, working without security, health care or pensions.

"These women and men need a strong voice. But when they look at Unions, they don't see themselves - only a grainy, faded picture from another time.  That's not the way it has to be.  The Labor Movement can't ask the next generation of workers to change how they earn their living to fit our model of Trade Unionism," he said.

Trumka said the AFL-CIO was planning to organize a "summit" of young workers to craft an action plan to meet their needs.

Part of the plan to create a younger union movement was the election of Liz Shuler, 39, to the No. 2 post in the federation, as secretary treasurer.

Shuler worked her way up through the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), where she started as a staff organizer and rose to become the assistant to the president. In her own speech, Ms. Shuler talked about reaching out to workers under the age of 35.  "It's not that today's young people don't like Unions," Schuler said.  "It's just that they really don't know about us."