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.
The Board initially issued 57 dispensary licenses; however, there are currently only 52 operating dispensaries.
For example, Pennsylvania has 109 medical cannabis dispensaries, and its population is about 12.8 million, equaling 0.85 dispensaries per capita.
“As previously done, RFA II will require applicants to specify the district wherein they are applying, and provisional dispensary licenses will be awarded based on those districts.
From there, all applications will be evaluated to determine who is a qualified applicant.
Delta-8 tetrahydrocannabinol offers the hemp industry commercial promise, with the potential for fresh markets and new products.
The cannabinoid already has provoked bans in 12 states: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Kentucky, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, Rhode Island and Utah, according to Marielle Weintraub, president of the U.S.
I think it’s incredibly short-sighted and can bring down the entire hemp industry before we’ve had the chance to show people what this plant can do.
The industry, she says, devoted years to convincing lawmakers that hemp was an extremely useful and versatile product, one that would deliver myriad commercial opportunities to farmers, manufacturers and stores, none of which involved people getting stoned.
“People want it and should have access to it,” she says.
The most famous cannabinoid, delta-9 THC, is the compound in cannabis that tends to get people “high.” While botanists would call hemp and cannabis the same thing, the 2018 Farm Bill established a legal difference.
Instead, manufacturers synthetically alter hemp-derived CBD through a chemical conversion that turns the cannabinoid into delta-8, allowing them to produce it in larger volumes.
The most well-known cannabinoid in the hemp plant is CBD, found now in supplements, tinctures, dog treats, salves and much more.
As new cannabinoids derived from legal hemp enter the market, federal agencies should steer clear, says Jody McGinness, director of operations at The Hemp Industries Association .
“To start ruling things out on the basis of this quality or that quality sells the hemp market short,” he says.
“Delta-8 is a minor cannabinoid that can be extracted from hemp.
Just as manufacturers cannot add the active ingredient in Viagra, sildenafil citrate, into products like drinks, chocolate bars and tinctures, they also are technically forbidden from using CBD.
“I have members that are deeply involved with it.
Delta-8, he says, will infringe on the monopoly that cannabis currently has on people seeking psychoactive results from cannabinoids.