The tactic of “salting” — getting a job with the specific intention of organizing your workplace — has recently been grabbing news headlines.

In a recent Bloomberg story, labor journalist Josh Eidelson showed how the Starbucks union drive, which began in Western New York and continues across the country, was started by salts. Eidelson, as well as labor journalist Luis Feliz Leon and scholar Mie Inouye, emphasized the critical role salts also played in the successful Amazon union drive in Staten Island. During recent Senate hearings on union busting at Starbucks, ex-CEO Howard Schultz referred to salting as a “nefarious act,” and industry groups are backing Republican efforts to crack down on the practice.

Salting helped build the labor movement over the past century and is clearly making a comeback in the new surge of union organizing. Right now, there are likely hundreds, if not thousands, of salts or salts-in-training who are driving new organizing efforts that will surface in the months and years ahead.