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The resurgence of the American labor movement is being led in no small part by a cohort of young, diverse, fired-up workers around the country. Union density remains embarrassingly low overall, but last month the National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB, released some genuinely inspiring numbers that suggest the perceived upswing in union activity is more than just a vibe.

During the 2024 fiscal year, which ended in September, the number of union petitions filed jumped 27% compared with 2023 — and was more than double what the agency received in 2021. Why does this matter? Basically, filing these petitions is a concrete sign that more people are trying to unionize their workplaces.

We already know that unions are popular, especially among young people. A 2022 report from the Center for American Progress found that Gen Z is the most pro-union generation in the US, and young organizers have been at the forefront of many labor actions in recent years, including the Starbucks union campaign. This new generation of organizers is embracing all sorts of strategies, including one of the oldest tactics in the pro-union handbook: salting.

Salting is an organizing tactic in which a person gets a job at a specific workplace with the goal of unionizing their coworkers. This kind of shop-floor organizing has a long history within the labor movement, and was once so common it was thoroughly unremarkable; if you were a young worker with socialist or progressive ideas in, say, the early 1900s, it was the most normal thing in the world to start talking to your coworkers about unionizing as soon as you’d learned their names.

“Compared to being a full-time union [organizer] supporting from the outside, it's easier to organize people when you're in the trenches with them as a co-worker, building personal relationships and trust day-by-day on the shop floor,” explains Eric Blanc, an assistant professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University and trainer for the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, which connects workers with union organizers.

Salting popped up again in a big way during the 1960s and '70s, when workers who were already involved in anti-Vietnam War protests and the Black power movement found themselves also organizing on the job. Former salt and factory worker Jon Melrod wrote in his memoir, Fighting Times: Organizing on the Front Lines of the Class War,“Along with thousands of other student revolutionaries, I believed that our generation could organize workers and poor people to fight for an end to exploitation, racial oppression, and sexual discrimination, and to bring to birth a new world in which hunger, poverty, inequality, and environmental destruction were forever banished.”

Melrod’s time organizing auto workers in the tumultuous 1970s and into the '80s may seem like a world away from making cappuccinos in a coffee shop in western New York, but when Teen Vogue reached out to Jaz Brick, one of the most well-known salts in the modern labor movement, their experiences started to sound awfully familiar. When Brisack started working at the Starbucks on Buffalo’s Elmwood Avenue in 2020, they brought plenty of prior organizing experience with them. Fresh off a successful organizing campaign at another local coffee chain, Spot Coffee, and motivated by the sting of an earlier, failed union drive at a Nissan factory in Mississippi, Brisack decided to start working at Starbucks after witnessing what they believed was a friend’s unjust firing. Within a year, Starbucks Workers United was born.

“I had learned about salting at Inside Organizer School trainings, and knew that it was an amazing tactic because it allows you to build relationships with co-workers, map your workplace, and get ready to launch a campaign with the speed necessary to take a company by surprise,” Brisack tells Teen Vogue via email. “With a team of 10 salts across Starbucks cafes in Buffalo, we were able to launch a campaign with enough support quickly enough that Starbucks wasn't able to prepare their union-busting efforts ahead of time — which was essential to our ability to win.”

Four years after starting their job at Starbucks, Brisack is currently a practitioner in residence at the UC Berkeley Labor Center, where they’re working on building out the Insider Organizer School. Their goal for that project is “to give young people a path into the labor movement and to help unions build salting programs and take advantage of this incredible tactic so that they can help more workers organize.” Meanwhile, Starbucks Workers United has continued to organize store after store, and recently hit a major milestone: The union represents 507 stores and more than 11,500 workers nationwide, as of late October, and is in the midst of bargaining its first contract with Starbucks.

Brisack and the other salts involved in that campaign obviously did a hell of a job, but they’re far from the only pro-union workers trying to spice up the workplace. The Rank & File Project (RFP) is a national organizing effort founded last year to recruit young progressive and socialist activists to join the labor movement. Explains Cyn, a 24-year-old pre-nursing student who’s planning to pursue a union job in nursing in the Bay Area, “Specifically, we're hoping that people join the labor movement at the level of rank and file, where we can have trusting relationships with our co-workers and organize together as equals.” Cyn, who has asked to withhold their last name given the sensitive nature of their work, is a member of the RFP’s steering committee.

“We believe that in order to transform the world, to fight for an ambitious, radical agenda…, we need to build not just any kind of labor movement, but a strong, democratic, and increasingly left-wing labor movement,” Can continues. “There have been political events, especially within the past decade, that have really radicalized a lot of young people and created a generation that's hungry to practice radical politics, and we want to show them that one really potent way to do that is to join the labor movement as rank and file workers, especially in industries where organizing can have an outsized impact.”

RFP has received support from movement stalwarts like Labor Notes and Teamsters for a Democratic Union, both of which boast members with personal experience in salting from its 1960s and '70s glory days. Another RFP member (who requested anonymity to avoid outing himself at work) is currently employed at the United Parcel Service, or UPS, and has joined their Teamsters local. He has previous experience as a student at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and working as a union staffer, but felt he could make more of a difference on the shop floor. “My job is to get in here, do a good job, and help my co-workers understand the contract and build solidarity with people,” he tells Teen Vogue. “It’s a lot of fun. Personally, I feel like I can relate to my co-workers at this job a lot better than I could at my white-collar jobs.”

Since his workplace already has a strong union, he sees his role as more political, and tries to use shared circumstances as an opportunity to make the connection between desired changes in the workplace and taking collective action. “You don't have to slam the socialism button,” he says. “Usually someone will bring up an issue to me, and I will use socialism — like, my analysis, all the things that I learned through my struggle and through school — and try to connect the dots for them; explain what I understand about collective action and how that can be an answer to some of their problems; and what it looks like to build collective action and use our labor power… you just kind of talk like a normal person.”

Changing the world for the better has been the goal of many generations of workers; some pulled it off and some didn’t, but the most important thing for all of us is to keep trying. Salting is just one way out of many to go about it, but Brisack is a big fan: “Unions are at 6% density in the private sector, and yet there are millions of workers who would like to organize their workplace,” they say. “Salts can help show their co-workers that a better life is possible and get things rolling in that direction.”

Yet as romantic or glamorous as the undercover aspects of salting might seem (especially if you’ve watched Boots Riley’s absurdist anti-capitalist epic Sorry to Bother You), Blanc says it’s just as important for young workers to stick around and organize at their current jobs. There are union drives happening in tech, higher ed, media, and so many other industries. There’s no need to run off and try to get a new gig at an auto factory if you’re already late for your shift at Amazon — though salts have reportedly been pretty busy there too. As Rutgers' Blanc sees it, the bottom line is simple: “Every job would benefit from a union and any job can become a union job if you're willing to put in the work to organize your co-workers.”

You heard them. Let’s get to work!