James Walsh: I first heard about salting while in college. A few friends—the most radical, politically active students on campus—salted hotels after graduation. I was dumbstruck by their dedication. Some of them had graduated with honors, now they were working as bellmen and room-service attendants alongside folks who would have killed for the opportunity to earn a college degree.

Salting intrigued me as a story, but it wasn’t something that I wanted to do. That is, until a job interview with a popular historian to be his research assistant, who encouraged me to salt and then write about my experience. At first, I was skeptical. But after a day or two of thinking about it, I decided it would be a really good way to investigate why low-wage service-industry workers weren’t joining unions, a fact that is hard to understand given that, by just about every metric, unionized workers have a better quality of life than non-union workers. So, I reached out to some union folks (who didn’t know that I wanted to write about my experience) and told them I wanted to salt. They sent me to Miami.

Lam: You mention in the book that recruiting salts is hard. Why, in your opinion, are Sarah, the Unite Here organizer you worked with, and the other salts you met in Florida motivated to do it?

Walsh: Everyone I talked to who had been part of a successful unionization campaign (salt, organizer, worker) talked about the high they felt once they’d won. I think Sarah, and the other salts, had witnessed the value of salting in successful campaigns and were eager to grow the program. By nature, salting is counter-intuitive—someone who believes in the value of unions gets a job at a non-union shop. Add to that the fact that many of the salts I met were young activists with college degrees, and it’s easy to understand why Sarah and many other salts felt as if they were a part of a counter-culture community that they were eager to expand.

Lam: Take me through the basics of how salting works and how you organized workers at the two Florida casinos, Calder and Mardi Gras.

Walsh: The most important part of any union campaign is building a leadership committee at work comprised of people who have sway among their friends and co-workers and who are strong enough to stand up to managers. I thought identifying leaders in the workplace would be a lot easier than it actually was. At first, I was drawn to funny or popular people, but I would eventually realize they didn’t have fight or weren’t mature enough to take on management.

I worked hard to get to know my coworkers. I tried to hang out with them outside of work as much as possible. I went to the batting cages, bowling, church, a new-age Buddhist service. I learned to cook Haitian food and did a training session with an amateur boxer. He spent the entire time encouraging me while chuckling at how weak I was.