[Music] Union organizing is difficult in the United States it is a knock down drag out fight going on now at Several of these companies and particularly at Starbucks [Music] a lot of people had the perception that you know this company was too big to take on strong unions are a vital part of rebuilding the declining middle class in this country Consulting makes a union campaign more successful because assault is usually able to keep things underground to get enough people on board that by the time the company finds out about the union campaign it's too late businesses hate salting more than they hate termites or shoplifters companies see salts as infiltrators [Music] the share of the private sector U.S workplace that is organized by labor unions has plummeted the past year and a half has seen a startling shift we've seen stunning victories at places like Amazon Trader Joe's Apple Chipotle REI and in some ways most strikingly at Starbucks where we've gone from zero unionized corporate run U.S Starbucks hundreds often salting is a key tactic in an organizing campaign salting means getting hired undercover at a company in order to organize there I wanted to Salt originally because my mother was in the restaurant industry her whole life she worked as a manager was putting in 72-hour weeks and she was diagnosed with a stage 3 ovarian cancer she like a lot of people in the service industry didn't have health care she spent most of her savings trying to fight that battle and you know by the time she died there was hardly anything left that's wrong that's not the world that I want to live in anything that I could do to improve that was something that I was willing to do salting has been a tactic used by Union organizers for more than a century the term salting is said to come from the idea of salting the mine when someone would put Gold Dust into a mine to trick a purchaser I'm Jazz press hack my job is to help workers who don't have unions get unions so this was the original job posting to advertise for inside organizers to come to Buffalo we ended up having a team of about 10 inside organizers they reached out and said hey I was curious if there was something to work on the summer through Workers United Jess said would you be willing to go into Starbucks in Buffalo and I said I'll apply right now I got myself hired by playing a role I was incredibly passionate about Starbucks and I was incredibly Smiley incredibly gentle in the interviews I drafted a cover letter talking about how I believed in a future at Starbucks that involved me just trying to capture the different check marks that managers are looking for you know talking about the business as a family and tried to present the most palatable employee to management that they could have and it always works [Music] companies of course don't like salting companies see salts as infiltrators who lied to them and they're lying to their co-workers and in the service of taking away the company's authority over how the business should be run I defy anyone who says that you know assault is a fake Barista so these are the drink recipe cards from Starbucks these were the basis for training new inside organizers on you know how to make sure that they were up to speed on the recipes and the proportions the whole point of becoming an inside organizer is that you are actually able to both do the job and build the trust necessary with co-workers to be able to organize and you can't do that by being bad at your job you have to take some time to get to know people build relationships and get to the place where you can start a union safely and you can actually get to a union election salting is going through a Renaissance now in the United States Advocates and experts on all sides of this have said it seems to be more people salting right now in the United States than we've seen in the past couple decades I don't think there's any company that you could insult from you know the United firm workers to the Building Trades to the service industry to manufacturing the goal should be to organize every company Union organizers in part through effective use of assaulting tactic have pulled off spectacular victories but none of them has a collective bargaining agreement you shouldn't have to have gone through the hell that we did by the company in order to leave our rights rights and to bargain with them but the fact that we were able to work together in tandem meant everything it means that now we can bargain the big question is can these workers win Union contracts and what will those contracts be Consulting is one of the hardest ways to organize but it's also the most effective way because the people who are willing to Salt are the ones who are actually willing to learn a job become one of the people and then build a union and help organize I think that's one of the most you know selfless things that people can do we need to make sure that the majority of the workforce is better taken care of and the best way to do that is through unionizing and getting contracts and guarantees to increase wages increase benefits it's worth doing and continuing to put pressure on companies everywhere to do better by their workers [Music]