Richard Nelson sponsored the bill, which passed in a 7-5 vote after an “impassioned” debate on April 27, The Advocate reported.
Nelson said he believes the state’s cannabis prohibition is a failed experiment and needs to end, according to The Advocate.
It must get approved by the Republican-dominated full House and Senate and Democratic Gov.
Both stores offer online pre-ordering for adults 21 and older and are technology-enabled with kiosks for quick ordering for walk-ins.
“We are excited to bring our nuEra branded products to Champaign and Pekin, including our new line of solvent-free concentrates, which we are really excited to be introducing,” nuEra Marketing Director Jonah Rapino said.
nuEra is also committed to giving back to the community in a variety of ways.
A unionization effort filed for 17 employees at the Curaleaf medical dispensary in Hanover, Mass., went all the way to Washington, D.C., before a final decision on the results of a mail-in election was made earlier this month.
The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 328, which represents more than 11,000 workers in a range of industries throughout Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts, filed for the Curaleaf Hanover union election April 20, 2020—during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There was some fighting back and forth—because it was during COVID—about people that they were bringing in from other areas and having them work there,” UFCW Local 328 President Tim Melia said.
A federal investigation and hearing by the National Labor Relations Board examined the circumstances of the challenged ballots, which stemmed from which workers were employed at the Hanover location before government shutdowns and which workers were not.
Local 328 organizers first connected with dispensary workers at Curaleaf Hanover in March 2020, a month before filing the unionization vote and before pandemic-related government shutdowns were enacted.
“What ended up happening was that the company had sent over some workers from different locations because this is a purely medicinal facility locations for Curaleaf had closed,” Local 328 Director of Organizing Sam Marvin said.
Curaleaf did not confirm the pre-shutdown whereabouts of its workers who represented the six challenged ballots that remained sealed, but the NLRB regional director in Boston determined those six should not be counted as part of the Hanover group.
First organized by meat cutters and butchers in 1937, the Local 328 now represents workers in myriad industries, including retail food, institutional food, health care, banking, transportation, manufacturing, barbers, cosmetologists and now cannabis.
Earlier this month, dispensary workers at Greenleaf Compassionate Care Center in Portsmouth, R.I., unionized by a 21-1 vote to join the Local 328.
Local 328 now represents workers from four cannabis businesses, including the Ocean State Cultivation Center in Warwick, R.I., where workers officially became the state’s first unionized cannabis organization with a negotiated contract in October 2020.
Perfect Union, a vertically integrated operator and parent company of OSCC, with dispensaries in California, New Mexico and Rhode Island, began paying all employees an additional $2.50 per hour on March 16, 2020—at the onset of COVID-19 and while negotiations were still taking place with UFCW.
“Taking care of our employees is one of our highest priorities,” Perfect Union CEO David Spradlin said in a Local 328 release.
A labor peace agreement is an arrangement between a union and an employer under which one or both sides agree to waive certain rights under federal law with regard to union organization and related activity.
“The UFCW has been so important in turning these jobs into careers,” said Matthew Baryshyan, who works in cultivation at OSCC.
A multistate operator headquartered in Chicago, Cresco also operates one of its Sunnyside dispensaries in Fall River, after the company closed on its acquisition of Hope Heal Health Inc.
“Sometimes the smaller, medium-size companies will sell to a larger company,” he said.
As the biggest companies continue to grow in a sector with increasing revenues, workers of those companies want to ensure they are rewarded “in the industry where they’re creating these profits through their work,” Marvin said.
Since the adult-use system launched more than two years ago, Massachusetts cannabis sales have exceeded more than $1.5 billion overall.
Big or small, the Local 328 is pushing to extend its representation in the cannabis space.
As other state legislatures continue to debate and pass adult-use cannabis measures, lawmakers are including provisions in their bills that aim to deter anti-union practices on the part of cannabis business owners.
Unionization can be good for both employers and employees, Marvin said.
“For example, we have UFCW industry pension funds that we can now negotiate these employers into because they’re union,” he said.
“We don’t want to see an industry that has a high turnover where patients and customers are going in and seeing a new face every day,” he said.
Although Local 328 representatives have a trio of moving parts in the cannabis space—including their current negotiation with Cresco Labs and upcoming negotiation efforts with Curaleaf and Greenleaf—Marvin and Melia said the budding sector is ripe for additional unionization.
Specifically for workers in medical dispensaries, who were deemed essential in many states as they worked on the front lines during the pandemic, having personal protective equipment , social-distancing protocols and proper cleaning measures in place were important safety standards, Marvin said.
labor law, at-will employment is an employer’s ability to dismiss an employee for any reason, and without warning, as long as the reason is not illegal.
The first bill would lift Denver’s license cap on new stores and cultivation facilities, which has been in place since 2016.
The second measure would legalize cannabis consumption facilities such as bars and clubs, where customers could bring cannabis to consume, and clubs could sell small amounts of cannabis for consumption, The Denver Post reported.
While city Mayor Michael Hancock supports both measures, over a dozen Denver public school principals wrote a joint letter to the city council expressing their concerns.
Denver Department of Excise and Licenses spokesman Eric Escudero said the proposal has strict rules for cannabis deliveries.
It’s come up in conversation frequently over the past year, but the “essential” tag that most states bestowed upon the legal cannabis business has been a real boon throughout the pandemic.
As more states come online and as legal cannabis picks up traction as a normalized segment of the American business sector, consumer interest seems to rise steadily.