Since 2012, when Washington and Colorado first legalized recreational marijuana use, the cannabis industry has seen rapid growth. In 2021, the national revenue from both medical and recreational cannabis sales reached $27 billion, an increase estimated at 47% from the previous year. As the industry expands, so has cannabis workers’ need for union representation. Enter the labor peace agreement: a contract ensuring fair organizing conditions for workers in exchange for a reduced risk of disruptions to the employer.
In an effort spearheaded by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), California, Colorado, New York, New Jersey and other states have tied labor peace agreements (LPAs) to the legalization and regulation of the cannabis industry. These states have enacted legislation that requires a signed LPA contract between an employer and a union before a business may receive a license from the state’s cannabis regulatory agency. Now, with similar requirements included in bills working their way through both its state House and Senate, Massachusetts could be next.
In February 2021, Massachusetts State Representative Steve Owens filed House Bill H.3710, entitled “[a]n Act to facilitate the unionization of the cannabis workforce.” The bill would establish a marijuana sales and cultivation license that is conditioned on the licensee signing and abiding by an LPA. Generally, an LPA is a contract between a cannabis employer and a union in which the employer agrees not to interfere with a union organizing campaign, and the union agrees not to engage in work stoppages like strikes, picketing, boycotts or other economic interference. Originally introduced during some of the worst days of the pandemic, the bill sought to respond to the upset and anger among many retail and service workers amid public backlash against COVID-19-related restrictions.
Representative Owens - credit
“On the ground enforcement, things like masking and checking for vaccines, that fell on the retail workers who got a lot of abuse,” said Owens. “I think that’s one of the triggers, why we started to see a lot of these retail places—your Starbucks’, your Amazon’s—look to unionize. That was the impetus to this, the fairness question. And here was an opportunity where we could say ‘no, we’re not just gonna go to bat for you, we’re going to level the playing field.’ At least in this industry where we have that ability to do so.”
The industry’s youth and its regulation at the state level allow for this type of legislation, but the history surrounding marijuana enforcement in the state has helped make the case for it. Massachusetts made recreational cannabis legal in 2016 following decades of marked racial disparities in arrest rates for both marijuana possession and sales. “When we legalized cannabis sales through the ballot, one of the things that was a big point of discussion during that time was, when we open the market, we would like to see the people who had been negatively impacted by the drug war to benefit in some way,” said Owens.
In the years since legalization, Owens asserted that larger corporations have been “gobbling up the little players,” displacing local owners in their own communities. It’s here where the idea of LPAs in the cannabis industry was born—as a response to workers’ continued struggles in the industry.
“One thing that we can do, to center equity and justice, is to level the playing field for unionization. If we can’t guarantee equity in ownership, at least we can provide for the workers who, I would say, are majority people of color, from communities impacted by the drug war, or lower income communities. If we can give them an opportunity to earn a good living from this work, this is one way to do that,” said Owens.
Massachusetts statehouse
Facilitating unionization in cannabis stands as a way for workers to secure protections against a variety of threats, whether it be risks to their wages caused by corporate takeovers or workplace safety hazards.
As the cannabis industry has matured, there have been increased reports of health and safety violations in both dispensaries and cultivation facilities, explains Jack Fell, UCFW Local 1445’s communications director. “Because cannabis is a new industry, we haven’t effectively regulated these industries as much as they should be… we’re seeing a lack of regulation specifically in the safety and protection for workers that we obviously see in other industries, but it’s much more rampant in cannabis, especially in the growing and cultivating facilities.”
In early 2022, Lorna McMurrey—a 27-year-old employee of the Florida-based cannabis company Trulieve—died due to an inability to breath after inhaling cannabis dust while working at Trulieve’s cultivation facility in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Her death brought to light the lack of oversight in cannabis manufacturing and exposed the unique risks workers face in the fledgling industry.
“These workers are a lot of times just left out to dry and left alone, because the companies don’t have to follow regulations. They should, but a company won’t do anything that it doesn’t have to,” said Fell.
In addition to safety risks, workers face the same union-busting tactics seen across industries, like captive employee meetings and anti-union rhetoric, explained Gabriel Camacho, Local 1445’s political director.
“Because cannabis has a young workforce, workers tend to be progressive and tend to be extremely pro-union,” he said. “In a normal organizing drive, when you petition the National Labor Relations Board for a representation election, the employer usually drags the process on and on. We can have up to 85% support, and by the time it comes to an election, that support has been eroded.”
LPAs are a way of ensuring a fair organizing process, Camacho explained. “With a labor peace agreement, the parties are on a level playing field. The employees will decide whether to unionize or not without undue interference or influence from the employers.”
H.3710 was approved by the Massachusetts legislature’s Joint Cannabis Policy Committee—a standing committee with members from both the House and Senate that leads on cannabis issues—last session, but no further action was taken once it arrived in the Senate’s Ways and Means Committee. That didn’t deter Representative Owens who refiled an amended bill this legislative session. Senator Lydia Edwards filed a companion bill in the Senate. “I’m optimistic that we can keep moving,” said Owens. “There’s a lot of energy around unionization of retail establishments… you want to make sure that there’s somebody looking out for not just the quality of the product and who’s enforcing the rules, but also somebody who is looking out for the workers as they try to maintain these high standards.”
Camacho agreed: “our idea of getting this done through state legislation is modeled after all kinds of laws that our union [UFCW] has passed in California, Colorado, and the neighboring states of New Jersey, Rhode Island and Connecticut. These New England states have labor peace agreements as a condition to get an operating cannabis license. So, we think we’re on firm ground. This is going to be our major legislative push for UFCW and Massachusetts.”
Massachusetts could be next in legally requiring labor peace agreements in the cannabis industry, offering a pathway for employment equity and fairness in union organizing. “We’re hoping that this time around we will get the bill to the governor’s desk,” said Camacho. “And we are very hopeful that Governor Maura Healy will sign it into law.”
