As the nation’s union leaders prepare to meet in Las Vegas this week, they might do well to ignore an advertising campaign that assures visitors their secrets are safe at the gaming table. Bruising losses in the last two presidential elections are good cause for self-examination in the movement. For labor’s own sake, new ideas shouldn’t be left at the Bellagio.

Already, some change seems likely. In a conference call with reporters last week, AFL-CIO boss John Sweeney agreed to let unions keep a portion of their dues for ramping up local organizing and recruitment. The reasons for the shift are obvious: Union membership in America has declined sharply over the past 25 years, and the influence of men like Mr. Sweeney over national elections has followed a similar trajectory.

The general consensus: Organized labor needs work.

A number of the reform proposals, ironically, are strongly influenced by business practices that organized labor has itself opposed over the years. As a condition of giving back dues, for example, Mr. Sweeney is requiring member unions to show results. And the push for lower dues is essentially a move toward decentralization. The biggest ally of bureaucracy, it seems, has become too bureaucratic.

All of which is no secret, either to the public or to union leaders. The driving force behind many current reforms is the president of the Service Employees International Union, Andrew Stern. Mr. Stern studied business at the University of Pennsylvania before working for the Pennsylvania welfare department and is committed to modernizing labor unions along the lines of modern businesses. It was largely because of pressure from him that Mr. Sweeney has agreed to reforms.

Yet those who fear – or hope – that talk of labor reform on the national level will mean similar changes in New York should schedule a checkup, and not because they need their heads examined. Unionized workers in New York, particularly in the health care industry, wield enormous power over the political landscape today. If union leaders adopt sweeping reforms in Las Vegas, the impact on state unions would hardly register.

Why? Recent history provides a clue.

On the national level, labor leaders have long been associated with the Democratic Party. But those bonds have hardened even more in recent years. Mr. Sweeney has compared the current President Bush to Herbert Hoover, who sat in the White House at the onset of the Great Depression, and told labor leaders during Mr. Bush’s first term to be on a “war footing.” In the fight for jobs, labor unions have identified the enemy. And it’s not China.

The picture is quite different in New York, where Republicans have traditionally sought and occasionally won the support of major unions. Governor Rockefeller earned the praise of construction workers by commissioning enormous public works projects. Governor Dewey issued an executive order giving state workers the right to organize. And Governor Pataki has won crucial support in recent years from the SEIU and the AFL-CIO.

How unions have managed to remain relevant in New York while losing power nationally will likely be a major theme of the Las Vegas meetings. The answer, in part, lies in the way unions here have responded to a national shift away from manufacturing and toward services. While labor chiefs like Mr. Sweeney have groused over losses in manufacturing, Mr. Stern and others have organized public and service employees to impressive effect.

The upshot is that whereas Mr. Sweeney’s endorsement has become a virtual kiss of death in national elections, union endorsement in New York has proved indispensable to some races. Dennis Rivera, leader of the New York City-based health care union 1199/SEIU, is routinely described as one of the most powerful people in state politics. His endorsement of Mr. Pataki in 2002 angered Republicans and Democrats alike, but resulted in expanded Medicaid coverage.

The increasing clout of New York’s health care industry is mirrored by Mr. Stern’s impact nationally. So far, that influence appears mostly limited to effecting changes within the union culture itself – changes that would likely include greater cultivation of Republican politicians. Mr. Stern campaigned aggressively for John Kerry last year, but his union also gave $500,000 to the Republican Governors Association.

The growth of Mr. Rivera’s health care union, and public employee unions like the United Federation of Teachers and the Civil Service Employees Association, have helped carry the AFL-CIO in New York. As the percentage of unionized American workers has declined to 12% today from 34% in 1955, New York’s union rolls actually rose 1% last year to put the state figure at 24%.

Numbers like that spell clout. Which is why labor representatives in Albany aren’t talking about internal reform the way national labor leaders are. When asked about the national conversation over the continuing relevance of the AFL-CIO, a New York spokesman for the union said his bosses haven’t taken a position on the matter. “It’s apples and oranges,” the spokesman, Mario Cilento, said. “One doesn’t affect the other.”

That may be so. But when labor leaders meet in the desert this week, they might ask what lessons unions in New York, and the health care union in particular, have for them. The first president of the AFL-CIO, a New Yorker named Samuel Gompers, was a cigar maker from the Lower East Side. As a sign of their commitment to better union health, Mr. Sweeney and others might look to a healthier profession for advice. They can find Mr. Rivera shaking hands with Republicans and Democrats at victory parties across the state.

Mr. McGuire is the Albany bureau man of The New York Sun.