Marijuana businesses are among those keeping a “now hiring” sign in the window, but for different reasons than the restaurants, hotels and retailers scrambling to get back to pre-pandemic staffing levels.
“With all the opportunity for transferable skills, I think someone could come in not knowing anything about cannabis and really find where they fit into this huge milieu of the growing industry and then grow right in there,” Sieh Samura, co-owner and CEO of the now-hiring Yamba Market in Central Square, said.
The Massachusetts non-medical cannabis workforce has grown from 5,846 licensed and active “agents” as of the Cannabis Control Commission’s mid-September 2019 meeting to 9,607 active agents at the time of its mid-September 2020 meeting, about 64 percent growth.
Last month, the Washington Post reported that the American legal cannabis sector more than doubled its 2019 growth with nearly 80,000 jobs added in 2020.
Here and elsewhere, some of the newest cannabis industry employees were working jobs in food service or other high-stress posts before or during the pandemic.
People have been toiling sometimes for less than they feel like they were worth, in positions and industries that might have changed and got a little nasty during the pandemic,” he said.
As Massachusetts marijuana companies get themselves established, staffing up is not just as simple as taking out a help wanted ad and then picking among the resumes and applications that come in.
“In the licensing phase, you go through this phase where you make a lot of commitments to the town, you make a lot of commitments to the state and they all stem from what the communities and the state and CCC want,” Wes Ritchie, who along with Ture Turnbull is co-founder and co-CEO of Tree House Craft Cannabis, said.
And the host community agreements that marijuana companies are required to enter into with municipalities can also include a provision requiring the company to make jobs available to residents of the municipality.
Ritchie and Turnbull plan to open that store in the coming weeks, but they said they have maintained a focus on diversity and equity in hiring throughout the years-long licensing phase.
“When Wes and I created this company, we brought our values with it from day one.
“You see it across industries where you can’t be it if you can’t see it, and a lot of the folks at the top of these companies are not always diverse in the way the CCC requires,” Ritchie said.
“There is a tremendous stigma, especially for veterans and soldiers, but the thing is this industry is here for their benefit, too,” he said.
Merrimac – Janet Susan Terry – March 28, 1953 – October 9, 2021 Janet passed away in her home in Merrimac, MA.