Salting Wouldn’t Be Necessary If Employers Didn’t Union Bust
The US workplace is a private dictatorship where bosses exercise extraordinary power and systematically union bust. “Salting,” or getting a job with the intent to organize a workplace, is a completely justifiable response to this workplace despotism.
Activists participate in a picket line against Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s union busting on July 19, 2022 in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images)
Today’s revival of union “salting” could not be more welcome or more urgently needed.
A tactic as old as the labor movement itself, salting describes going to work in an unorganized workplace where there may be a chance to help initiate new union organizing.
It’s also a label for taking jobs at already unionized employers, hoping to play a positive role. But here I will deal with the former: taking jobs to help spur new organizing.
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