As America’s largest labor federation, the AFL-CIO, struggles with questions about its strategy, leadership, and even its viability, a nascent alliance of member unions could be moving into position to swing the outcome of the reform debate.

Yesterday, the presidents of at least four major unions met privately in Washington, D.C., to discuss the federation’s future, as well as that of the AFL-CIO’s president, John Sweeney, according to a person who attended.

Unions represented at the session included the American Federation of Teachers, the International Association of Fire Fighters, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the United Food and Commercial Workers, as well as representatives of several building trades, according to the source, who asked not to be identified.

In recent months, the labor movement has divided into two camps. The Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters, and others have expressed sharp disagreement with Mr. Sweeney, demanding that they be allowed to finance organizing efforts with rebates of up to 50% of the dues the unions currently pay to the federation.

Mr. Sweeney – backed by the Machinists, some government employee unions, and others – has offered a less radical reform plan and warned that further changes could gut labor’s political operation.

Most of the union chiefs attending yesterday’s meeting expressed concern about the infighting and the reform plan recently set forth by Mr. Sweeney, but they also voiced qualms about some of the most ardent reformers, the attendee said.

In an interview yesterday, the president of the Service Employees, Andrew Stern, commented on the newest alliance of unions. “It’s the harbinger or the beginning of the creation of a third center of this debate,” he said.

Mr. Stern said it appears the new group is being led by the president of the firefighters, Harold Schaitberger. He is a former Sweeney loyalist who blasted the federation chief in a sharply worded letter made public this month. Mr. Schaitberger and the union chiefs said to have attended yesterday’s meeting could not be reached for comment.

“The question is: Is he going to form a new way, a different way, and a third way? It’s hard to imagine he’s going to fall back into the Sweeney camp,” Mr. Stern said.

Mr. Sweeney is up for re-election at a labor convention in July. Yesterday, the unions challenging him issued a position paper outlining their strategy to reverse labor’s decline.

In a statement, Mr. Sweeney wrote, “The ideas in this proposal are quite similar to those we issued a couple weeks ago, and it’s hard to imagine why they would be the basis for dividing and weakening the labor movement.”