With the cannabis industry's growth into a multi-billion
dollar industry, employing about 321,000 individuals, comes the
intensification of focus from unions viewing the industry as a
large growth opportunity. Much of the union organizing to
date has been led by the United Food and Commercial Workers
International Union, which launched a cannabis organizing campaign
in 2011.
Since October 2020, efforts to unionize
workers in the cannabis industry kicked into overdrive. Ten
cannabis facility workers voted to unionize in those five months
throughout the country in Rhode Island, California, DC,
Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Illinois.
This past month in Chicago, 40 employees at Sunnyside Cannabis
Dispensary in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood became the first
dispensary workers in Illinois to ratify a union contract.
Additionally the state's first cannabis union contract was
ratified in December by more than 180 workers at the Cresco Labs
cultivation
