There’s much that sets the still-emerging U.S. marijuana industry apart from traditional sectors of American business.

Cannabis companies must contend with heavier taxes, stricter regulation and an ongoing conflict with federal law.
 

However, there’s one area where marijuana firms behave much the same way as Amazon, Starbucks or Target – an uneasy and often adversarial relationship with labor, according to documents and industry observers.

In October 2021, with the COVID-19 pandemic encouraging “essential workers” at marijuana stores nationwide to reassess conditions and pay, employees at multistate operator Curaleaf Holdings’ store in Worth, Illinois, voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).

That was among a flurry of unionizations in 2021-22 that were touted as major victories for labor organizations, which saw a once-in-a-generation opportunity for growth in the labor-intensive marijuana industry.

But simply voting to unionize, the first and possibly easiest step in a long process, doesn’t guarantee workers anything.

Subsequent contract negotiations can drag on for an average of 15 months, according to a recent Bloomberg Law analysis.

The Curaleaf workers in Illinois never got to that point. Instead, earlier this year, a worker moved to kick out the union.

According to National Labor Relations Board records, a Curaleaf employee retained an attorney with the National Right to Work Foundation, a prominent anti-union advocacy group, to “decertify” or remove the union on the basis that the majority of the 30 workers there no longer want to be unionized.

A vote is pending but has not yet been scheduled.

The looming decertification in Illinois is one of at least three examples nationwide of marijuana workers rejecting or at least reconsidering relationships with organized labor.

According to representatives of management and unions, these setbacks – following a flurry of early organizing victories and even cooperation between both sides – demonstrate that labor relations in the $36 billion legal marijuana industry are at a key inflection point.