Union Drive at Missouri Cannabis Company Could Impact National Labor Law
The cannabis market in the United States has exploded in recent years, with total retail sales from medicinal and recreational marijuana projected to exceed $50 billion per year within the next three years. Recreational marijuana is now legal in 24 states, and three more have legalization initiatives on the ballot this November. Sales from recreational marijuana alone surpassed $30 billion last year.
However, the workers who create that value often labor for low wages and in dangerous conditions. Many are fighting to unionize and collectively bargain for better contracts. Over 15,000 cannabis workers have already joined locals of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), and UFCW organizing efforts are ongoing at dozens more cannabis facilities nationwide.
“Cannabis workers are interested in and want to explore and try out their union rights, their labor rights, their ability to collectively bargain a contract,” says Sean Shannon, lead organizer with UFCW 655, which represents workers in Missouri. “They want to be in this industry in the long run, and they see this as the best option to do it,” Shannon told Truthout.
As cannabis workers move to unionize, some employers are fighting to block their efforts. One legal challenge to a union drive at a cannabis operation in St. Louis, Missouri, has made its way up to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Organizers and legal experts who spoke to Truthout said the board’s eventual decision in this case could have far-reaching consequences, affecting future efforts to organize and protect workers in this fast-growing industry. While similar cases at the regional level have been decided in favor of the workers, further delay on the national case could upend precedent if former President Donald Trump is reelected and makes good on his promise to fire the NLRB’s general counsel and reorganize the board.
At issue in the Missouri case is a group of post-harvest workers employed by BeLeaf Medical at one of its cannabis cultivation and processing facilities. BeLeaf Medical operates three such facilities under the name Sinse Cannabis. Its largest Sinse Cannabis location employs more than 30 workers who cultivate, process, package and ship marijuana products to dispensaries.
When workers responsible for processing and packaging marijuana at that facility signed union cards and filed a petition to unionize in September 2023, BeLeaf Medical argued that the employees were agricultural workers and not entitled to unionize. Agricultural workers are not protected under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the federal legislation that ensures employees have the right to form a union.
“It’s been a tooth-and-nail fight this whole time,” Will Braddum, a post-harvest lead at Sinse Cannabis, told Truthout of BeLeaf Medical’s response to the union push. “They’re not going to budge; they don’t want a union in their facility or any of their facilities.”
Workers at Sinse Cannabis sought a union last year when workplace safety concerns and new and confusing punitive policies began piling up, and morale began to suffer. “We felt like we needed to have a voice,” Braddum told Truthout.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) have begun to acknowledge common workplace health and safety issues at cannabis facilities. Last year, the CDC labeled occupational allergic diseases, such as asthma, among post-harvest workers “an emerging concern.” That announcement came after 27-year-old Lorna McMurrey, a production worker at Trulieve Cannabis in Massachusetts, had a fatal heart attack at her workstation in January 2022 after exposure to cannabis dust in the air caused her to develop asthma. OSHA fined Trulieve following McMurrey’s death. It has also cited cannabis businesses in multiple other states for failing to protect employees from workplace hazards, including failing to provide sufficient personal protective equipment and failing to properly label or store fungicides and other chemicals.
Concerns about air quality were among the issues that led workers at Sinse Cannabis to begin organizing. “You’re dealing with so much plant matter in the air,” said Scotti Iman, a former post-harvest worker at Sinse Cannabis. He told Truthout that he and other colleagues sometimes experienced symptoms of allergies or asthma on the job. “Air quality was definitely something we were concerned about,” he said.
Cannabis workers also often face extreme heat in indoor grow houses and exposure to chemical and biological hazards in cultivation and processing. Despite the high-risk environment, most workers in the industry only earn between $14 and $22.50 per hour, about half the average hourly wage for all U.S. workers. Many cannabis workers are also on part-time or temporary contracts, which excludes them from employer-sponsored health insurance programs.
When management at Sinse Cannabis learned their employees were organizing, workers said they increased punitive measures in the workplace. UFCW 655 has filed three unfair labor practice charges against BeLeaf Medical, including one case involving a worker the union alleges was fired for taking a leadership role in the campaign. BeLeaf Medical’s conduct has workers “terrified,” Shannon told Truthout.
Still, the post-harvest workers at Sinse Cannabis believe they have the right to unionize. Workers who spoke to Truthout said they do not perform the tasks of agricultural workers, which would exempt them from protection under the NLRA. Of the dozen workers who first signed union cards, three employees worked in the facility’s lab making concentrates, two worked in order fulfillment preparing packaged products for distribution, and seven others performed various processing tasks with dried and cured marijuana, including operating a machine trimmer, hand-trimming, pre-rolling joints or otherwise packaging the product for sale.
“They say that we are farmers, and our part of the job is farming, but I still, to this day, have not touched any soil,” Braddum told Truthout. “I’ve never put any water on anything. I’ve never even turned on or off a light in a room with living plants in it.”
When BeLeaf Medical first challenged the petition to unionize, Andrea Wilkes, the NLRB’s regional director for Missouri and five other Midwestern states, twice ruled against the company’s argument and ordered a unionization election. That election came on February 6, 2024. Fifteen Sinse Cannabis employees cast votes, including two lab employees, two order fulfillment employees and 11 other post-harvest workers.
The ballots belonging to those 11 post-harvest employees have yet to be opened and counted, as BeLeaf Medical challenged the votes at the election. Shannon said the move was unprecedented following the pair of rulings from Wilkes. Her ruling also followed one made in a similar case from New Jersey in September 2023, where Kimberly Andrews, the NLRB regional director for four states in New England, sided with post-harvest workers. Those workers went on to win their union following the decision.
Decisions in each of those cases compared the cannabis industry to the tobacco industry, where there is a precedent that classifies workers who bulk or stem tobacco as protected under the NLRA — they are not classified as agricultural workers. “Removing the veins from tobacco leaves and fermenting the leaves has been held to be outside the definition of agriculture,” Wilkes wrote. The post-harvest employees at Sinse Cannabis were, therefore, not “engaged in primary agricultural activities.”
BeLeaf Medical wants to upend that comparison, arguing in its filing that “the legal cannabis cultivation industry is relatively new in the United States, and it is different from all previously analyzed agricultural industries” and “there is no officially reported board precedent and no reported judicial decisions to help establish where the line between agricultural and non-agricultural activities may be drawn.” BeLeaf Medical did not respond to Truthout’s requests for comment.
While the national board has yet to weigh in, legal experts who spoke to Truthout said the previous decisions in the Sinse Cannabis and Columbia Care New Jersey cases do give some indication of how it might rule. One warned, however, that the outcome could be unexpected if the case were to be delayed and decided by Trump-appointed board members. Under the previous Trump administration, the NLRB made decisions, including some that reversed precedent, to weaken workers’ rights under the NLRA. Some of those decisions included giving employers greater influence over bargaining unit determinations and more power to undermine the collective bargaining process and circumscribing when and how workers are allowed to organize on company property.
Workers at Sinse Cannabis remain hopeful. “Right now, it’s really hard for the workers because they’re being denied their basic status quo protections,” Shannon told Truthout. “But they would have won this election; they’re going to win it as soon as the ballots are opened.”