A Salting Solution Checklist

What can you do to protect your company from union salting activities? The answers are simple, and they’re good HR practice:

• Require job candidates to list job references and account for gaps in employment.
• Conduct regular reference checks on all job candidate finalists.
• Develop and adhere to a policy declining to hire applicants who haven’t been truthful on their job applications, and keep documentation of these occurrences.
• Develop and equally enforce a no-solicitation policy.
• Develop and enforce a no-moonlighting policy.
• Apply discipline and dismissal policies equally to all employees who violate company policies.
• Keep and maintain documentation that will show a past practice of equally disciplining and dismissing employees who’ve violated company policies. This can be used to prove that the employer’s behavior is consistent and nondiscriminatory.
• Train hiring officials to not consider or mention union activity during the hiring process.
• Require new employees to sign a statement stating that they’ve reviewed, understand and will comply with company policies during their employment.
• Consider salting and employer liability insurance. With more than 33,000 unfair labor charges filed against employers each year, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.