The question is always 'What is the role of a labor movement?' How much is about collective bargaining, how much is about social change for all workers?
It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today. The 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans. The cornerstones of the middle-class security all bear the union label.
What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays' Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people... Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie... Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it's down to us.
The labor movement means just this: it is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth.
I would say the issue for the labor movement in the United States is not structural... there is no correlation between the success of workers and how the labor movement is structured.