(FORTUNE Magazine) – Can anything be done to reverse the long slide of America's unions? The answer frequently given around here is ''no, fortunately,'' but the Clintonites obviously mean to try. The emerging official doctrine, evidenced in numerous Reichian pronouncements and Gouldian analyses, holds that Big Labor can and should be propped up. Most of the attention has been focused on Labor Secretary Robert Reich, but a sleeper to watch out for is William B. Gould IV, professor of law at Stanford and Bill's nominee for chairman of the National Labor Relations Board. Gould's views are abundantly clear, as he has written some 50-odd law review articles and six books, the most recent being Agenda for Reform: The Future of Employment Relations and the Law, a call for wholesale rewriting of labor law. Counseling its readers that ''hard-line antilabor tactics'' are now passe, Business Week gave the book a highly affirmative review, now being distributed by the MIT Press publicity department. The review is headed ''Labor's White Knight?'' and what that question mark is doing there we still can't figure out. Gould holds a few positions mildly irksome to the AFL- CIO, but on all the gut issues -- e.g., management's right to permanently replace strikers -- he looks to the unions like a blessing not in disguise. How did Big Labor get so little? Why has organized labor's share of the work force tumbled from around one-third in the 1950s to perhaps 16% today (and perhaps 10% in the private sector)? Most scholars would say the answers are fairly obvious. First, deregulation in the U.S., combined with the increasing globalization of markets, left employers operating in a world where the extra labor costs associated with unionism made them noncompetitive. Second, the shift to services swelled the number of workers who do not want unions and vote against them in representation elections (where in recent years less than half of all ballots have been cast in favor of unionization, even though unions call for elections only at companies where they think they have a chance of winning). The answers coming out of the Clinton Administration are quite different. They emphasize not global economic change but the wickedness of union-busting employers. They state that we need new laws to give the porkchoppers a break, and proudly point to their Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations, which is scheduled to issue a report next year telling tout Washington exactly what breaks are needed. The commission is headed by John T. Dunlop, long a professor at Harvard but also an insider in Big Labor's councils. What changes will be proposed? Professor Leo Troy of Rutgers, our own preferred consultant on these issues, says some of what the Clintonites want is fairly familiar and has been beaten back in Congress in recent years. Still, there will surely be new efforts to prevent permanent replacement of strikers and limit employers' options in closing plants; and at summer's end, we were already witnessing an effort, apparently successful, to water down Hatch Act limitations on union political activity. Gould himself is closely identified with two other proposals guaranteed to generate hysterics in employerland. One would place less emphasis on secret- ballot representation elections and allow the NLRB to certify unions when a majority of the workers have signed cards showing their support of the union. For reasons not needing to be explained to grownups, employers still like secret ballots. Another proposal of Gould's would allow for limited bargaining rights even when a majority votes against the union. The idea here is that a minority feeling strongly about its need for representation should not be denied just because other workers disagree. Somewhat reminiscent of recent famous proposals to grant racial minorities special voting rights, the proposal has led Troy to label Gould ''the Lani Guinier of labor.'' As we write, it doesn't look as though he will share Lani's fate on the Hill. But it also doesn't look as though the unions' slide will be repealed by Clinton's policies. Not unless somebody repeals economics.