New legislation has been introduced in Congress designed to prohibit the presence of union professionals in the workplace whose sole purposes are to organize workers. “Imagine a scenario where an employee, without the knowledge of their colleagues and employer, is receiving compensation from a union while advocating for its interests within the workplace,” Utah Republican Representative Burgess said in introducing the legislation. “This deception not only breeds suspicion, but also erodes the very foundation of trust and transparency between employers and employees,” Burgess continued in a statement. The legislation is officially called the Start Applying Labor Transparency Act, or SALT Act. If passed it will effectively amend the historic Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959. Employers have for decades complained about the practice of labor unions recruiting people who end up getting jobs in a given workplace and then begin to talk to fellow workers about joining a union. The process is commonly called “salting.” A person engaged in such practices, notes the Society for Human Resource Management Foundation, “may be overtly direct about their intentions or may use more subtle techniques.” Either way, the person’s role is to “gather information as a company insider and use it in the union organizing campaign.” According to the New York Times, successful labor organizing at such companies as Amazon and Starbucks was in part due to salting. “They typically begin by establishing themselves as loyal colleagues, and then quietly raise the topic of unionizing with co-workers," notes the paper. Last year the publication Labor Notes defended salting, arguing that “when organizing is a de facto illegal act, when workers are fired and victimized by the tens of thousands for exercising their paper right to unionize, salting is the completely justified response.” The SALT Act is now under review in the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. By Garry Boulard
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