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This new state data comes on the heels of data released Monday which showed that union membership grew by more than 100,000 nationwide in 1998. The number of union members in the U.S. rose from 16.1 to 16.2 million.

More than half the states also showed an increase in the percentage of its overall workforce which is unionized. This is in contrast to the national trend which showed that although the number of union members climbed, the share of the workforce belonging to unions declined from 14.1 percent to 13.9 percent. This was a smaller decline than in the previous year.

California led the nation with a net increase of 87,000 union members in 1998. Other states that showed an increase or a stabalization, in order of the number of union members added, were: Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Washington, Kentucky, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, Louisiana, Connecticut, North Carolina, Delaware, Nebraska, Oklahoma, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Kansas, Florida, Mississippi, Hawaii, Vermont, Wisconsin, Montana, Arkansas, Wyoming, North Dakota, Alaska, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Washington, DC.

More than half the states also showed an increase in the percentage of their workforce which is unionized. These were, in alphabetical order: Alaska, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming.

"This new data confirms that today's unions are on the right track," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. "Our commitment and dedication to organizing, at all levels of the labor movement, is beginning to bear fruit -- but we still have a long way to go. We need to stay focused and redouble our efforts. "

A closer look at individual sectors of the economy shows that unions brought in at least 373,000 new members -- in the service, communications and utilities, and government sectors. This gain, however, was offset by union job losses in such sectors as manufacturing.

The overall rise in union membership is due in large part to aggressive organizing efforts of unions. Unions organized more and won more in the first half of 1998 compared to the first half of 1997, according to a study by the Bureau of National Affairs (BNA). The number of government-supervised union elections rose 8.9 percent from 1479 in the first half of 1997 to 1611 in the first half of 1998. Workers trying to form unions won more often, winning 51.7 percent of elections, up from 49.2 percent in 1997. "Clearly, the lesson here is that we're not only trying more, we're winning more," said Kirk Adams, AFL-CIO Organizing Director.

Some of the highlights of organizing in 1998 included the 19,000 United Airlines passenger service workers who unionized with the International Association of Machinists (IAM) in July, the largest single organizing win in more than 20 years; the 4500 workers at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas who organized in October after their employer agreed to recognize their choice for a union; and the 2500 workers at the Sunrise Hospital (Columbia HCA) who organized with the Service Employees' International Union (SEIU) this fall in a campaign that was a model of unions' new outreach to involve entire communities in defending workers' right to organize.

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