CT's cannabis industry is just starting up. There's a push to unionize the workforce.

Union representatives have signed agreements with dozens of new and existing cannabis businesses in Connecticut allowing them to launch organizing campaigns geared toward the state’s expanding cannabis workforce with the state preparing to launch legal pot sales early next year.

The United Food and Commercial Workers, which represents tens of thousands of cannabis workers nationwide, is leading the push to unionize the industry in Connecticut.

“The past few months have been really busy. We’ve had interest in all parts of the state from workers,” said Emily Sabo, director of organizing at UFCW Local 919, which has active organizing campaigns going on at existing medical marijuana grow and retail sites and new cannabis businesses, which have received preliminary approval to operate in the new adult-use market.

Sabo declined to share the names of the businesses given the discussions are still in the early stages. “We don’t have any organized workers yet,” she said.

Connecticut’s adult-use cannabis law requires businesses to enter into labor peace agreements as a condition of getting a final license, enabling union representatives to organize workers without objection or interference from management.

Sabo said UFCW Local 919 has signed LPAs with some of the state’s existing medical marijuana businesses and new businesses that have received provisional licenses to operate in the adult-use market. At least one potential operator, Luis Vega, whose company Nautilus Botanicals received a provisional cultivator license from the state, vowed to enter a labor agreement with the union, if he receives a final license.

The lucrative legal cannabis market has attracted strong interest in Connecticut as it has in other states where pot is legal. Legal cannabis sales in the U.S. are estimated to reach $27 billion by the end of this year, according to market researcher BDSA.

In Connecticut, direct and indirect revenue generated from cannabis sales and associated revenues could push over a billion dollars by the end of the 2020s, while creating hundreds of jobs in the industry and hundreds of millions in additional tax revenue for state and local governments, once the roll out evolves into a mature market.

 “People are going to be making billions off this industry. Workers need to have a piece of that,” Sabo said.

The Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis estimated the state’s cannabis workforce would reach between 5,669 and 7,418 employees in the first year of legal sales. That number includes workers directly employed by the industry and in supporting industries. By year five, the workforce could grow to between 10,424 and 17,462 workers, according to the analysis.

The state’s existing medical marijuana market includes four producers and 18 dispensaries, many of which have indicated they also want to operate in the adult-use market. Additionally, the state Department of Consumer Protection has issued dozens of provisional licenses to new cannabis businesses including retailers, growers, and product packagers.

The movement to organize cannabis workers in Connecticut comes amid a growing push to unionize the industry across the country. Sabo said the trend is being observed outside the cannabis industry too amid renewed support for the labor movement.

“Union favorability is so much higher right now,” she said.

UFCW has had particular success organizing workers in states where labor peace agreements are required or encouraged for cannabis businesses to get licensed. Typically, the agreements enable workers to “get to a contract a little faster than normal,” Sabo said, given they create a neutral environment for organizing to occur. She said she’s been involved in organizing campaigns that have lasted as short as a few months and as long as five years.  

The Connecticut Medical Cannabis Council, which represents the state’s four medical producers, pushed back against the requirement for labor peace agreements when the issue came up in the General Assembly. The council argued that no other private employer or industry in the state is required to enter into such an agreement, and that the requirement could conflict with federal labor law.

“Nothing in the eight-year operation of Connecticut’s medical marijuana program demonstrates any justification for singling out cannabis establishments for unprecedented state interference in their labor relations activity,” the council said. “They have not experienced a single occurrence of workplace disruptions of the kind that labor peace agreements are intended to avoid.”