Published: March 4, 2010

Union membership in New Jersey rose last year for the first time since 2005, with growth in the public sector outpacing that of the private sector for the first time.

Wage and salary workers who belong to unions rose a percentage point to 19.3 percent of the workforce. A union membership database compiled annually by two economics professors shows the union workforce increased faster in the state's public sector than in private industry.

Barry Hirsch at Georgia State University in Atlanta and David Macpherson at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, reported that New Jersey's public-sector unionization grew to 64.6 percent in 2009 from 62.1 percent the prior year among wage and salary workers while the private-sector numbers rose to 10.5 percent from 10.3 percent.

Nationally, private-sector union membership in 2009 fell to 7.2 percent from 7.6 percent from the previous year, according to the database. New Jersey's overall union membership exceeds the 12.3 percent that union workers represent out of the nation's wage and salary workers.

"There's definitely been growth," said Hirsch, regarding New Jersey's increase.

Known as The Union Membership and Coverage Database, the report uses data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Population Survey and dates to 1983.

Separating private- and public-sector membership (but particularly governmental) is essential to understanding America's unionization, said Leo Troy, economics professor at Rutgers University in Newark.

"Private unions must confront employer and often employee opposition," said Troy.

Hirsch attributes the changes in public and private union membership to increasing competition within the private industry and the lack of competition in the government arena.

"I argue it's just this increasingly competitive market and companies in the private sector have been less flexible and competed less well in what's becoming an increasingly competitive world," said Hirsch, and used the automotive industry as an example.

Additionally, he said private industry is much more sensitive to business cycles, triggered by consumer spending, which has less impact on the public sector.

Membership grew by 5 percent in 2009 in New Jersey among private-sector school bus drivers, cafeteria workers and those with janitorial and security jobs, said Matthew Painter, assistant communications director for 32BJ Service Employees International Union in Manhattan.

Membership has grown "consistently over the past five years," for the 8,500-member union, said Painter.

"Many workers have no access to health care coverage and see the union as the best path to obtaining quality, affordable insurance," said Kevin Brown, New Jersey state director for the union.

Unions are trying to boost members through measures such as the so-called card-check worker-organizing bill that would make it easier for workers to organize. That bill is stalled in Congress. Organized labor scored a victory last month when ramp workers at Continental Airlines voted to join the AFL-CIO after previous union-organizing efforts were defeated.