salting

salting, organizing tactic employed by labour unions. To start the process, a union targets a nonunionized company and encourages some of its members to seek employment there. Once these “salts” have been hired, they initiate efforts to organize nonunion workers from within the company. It is the union’s goal to have workers of the targeted company vote for representation by the union. During the organizing phase the union might provide additional compensation to the salts so that their total pay is on par with union wages. Salting in the United States became increasingly common in the 1980s, when legislation made other organizing efforts more difficult.