A few months later, unionized workers at a Cresco manufacturing facility in Joliet, Ill., did the same thing.
Organized workers doing away with union affiliations is nothing new in the labor movement, and the fact that it’s happening in the nascent cannabis industry reflects just how much the sector has matured. Union efforts among cannabis workers took off in recent years, as unrest built during the pandemic and more companies, including major operators, entered the market. UFCW, the predominant union for cannabis workers, currently represents more than 10,000cannabis employees at around 400 locations around the country, including about 30 sites in Massachusetts.
But belonging to a union doesn’t solve everything, especially when the cost of living outpaces wage increases and workers not bound by collective bargaining agreements get raises and perks that union members don’t. And as contracts start coming up for renewal, as was the case in Fall River, labor law allows employees to ditch their unions provided a majority agrees to it.
“As the cannabis industry matures, it’s dealing with the same kinds of business management issues that more mature businesses have long dealt with, and that includes labor unions,” said Jonathan Keselenko, a partner at Foley Hoag in Boston, which represents cannabis companies across the country.
Keselenko pointed to Starbucks workers, some of whom disavowed their union membership before contracts were ratified, a time when it’s much more common for workers to decertify.
Cresco Labs has nearly 3,000 employees at 72 dispensaries and 12 operations sites around the country, 14 of which have union representation. Two of the six Cresco facilities in Massachusetts are currently unionized. As the company has grown and developed, it has been able to negotiate better health insurance rates and offer new benefits such as paid volunteer time and stock options, said Lindsey Dadourian, a Cresco Labs senior vice president.
But it can be difficult to make adjustments on the fly for union workers whose pay and benefits are designated in their contracts because each change has to be bargained with the union, she said. Cresco granted wage increases to nonunion workers to stay competitive in the market, she said, but couldn’t do the same for union workers because of the contract.
The same thing is happening at other cannabis companies around the country, she said.
“Early [union] organization may have been disadvantageous because these companies were still growing and evolving, especially in the employee space,” Dadourian said. “As these cannabis companies have grown and professionalized and been afforded more legitimacy in the public eye, in the business eye … the companies have been able to engage in more and better benefits for their employees.”
Brissette, the Fall River gardener who led the decertification effort of nearly 25 unionized workers, said that when they approached their union rep about getting wage increases that non-union employees were getting, he warned that the company might want to open up the contract and essentially “rebargain everything,” and this could mean losing other benefits.
Mike Santos, organizing director for UFCW Local 328 in Providence, which represented the Fall River cultivation workers, said Cresco was “preying” on workers by telling them they couldn’t give raises because of the union contract. The decertification campaign, he said, “came from a place of union busting.”
“There’s never been a case where a company’s come to us and said, ‘Hey, we want to give the workers more money,’ and we say no,” he said. “If it’s something that’s beneficial to the workers, why would we bargain it?”
Conditions have improved post-union, Brissette said. Gardener pay went from $19 to $20 an hour, and lead gardeners were bumped from $21 to $22.50, and everyone is eligible for performance-based bonuses and Cresco stock.
“We felt that putting our faith in [the company] would work out, and it has,” said Brissette, 25, who started working at the Fall River facility after workers voted to organize.
The wage increases weren’t granted because the workers left the union, Dadourian said. If the workers had remained unionized, these wage increases would have been part of negotiations when the contract was up this spring.
Despite the two recent decertifications, said Megan Carvalho, UFCW’s national cannabis campaign coordinator, “more workers than ever are reaching out to us to make their voices heard by choosing UFCW as their union.”
In Fall River, she said, the Cresco Labs cultivation workers no longer have that support.
“Sure, maybe temporarily they got a wage increase,” she said, “But they’ve lost their job security, they’re lost their collective voice. They’ve sacrificed a lot of things in the process, and without a union contract, those increases could be taken away at any time.”
Peyton Durkee and her co-workers at Rise Dispensary in Dracut joined UFCW Local 1445 in May and are hopeful that it will lead to clearer, more consistent wage categories, disciplinary policies, and health insurance coverage.
“I want … to be able to hold the people above me accountable for their actions just as I’m held accountable for my own,” she said. “We deserve to have a voice because we keep that place going.”
Katie Johnston can be reached at katie.johnston@globe.com. Follow her @ktkjohnston.
