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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tA line snaked out the door at Curaleaf’s midtown location on North Central Avenue on the first day of selling marijuana for recreational use in January 2021.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tA line snaked out the door at Curaleaf’s midtown location on North Central Avenue on the first day of selling marijuana for recreational use in January 2021.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Jacob Tyler Dunn<\/p>\n
Nearly four years ago, employees at Curaleaf Midtown Phoenix<\/a> became the first dispensary workers in Arizona to unionize. Now, following stalled negotiations over wage increases, organizers finally ratified their first union contract earlier this month.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m so excited to finally be a union member,\u201d wrote Brandon Richardson, a Midtown budtender and union bargaining committee member, in a press release. \u201cNow that we have the protection of a union contract and guaranteed raises, I feel like I can finally breathe easy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The three-year collective bargaining agreement includes \u201cguaranteed wage increases,\u201d the creation of \u201cprogressive discipline and grievance procedures\u201d and protects budtenders\u2019 existing benefits from being taken away during the life of the agreement, according to a press release from the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 99, which represents workers at Arizona cannabis shops. The contract was unanimously ratified on May 1.<\/p>\n Prior to the contract\u2019s ratification, budtenders started at $15.15 per hour and rarely received raises. That was the case for 29-year-old Oscar Jacobo, who was hired at Curaleaf Midtown right around the time the shop opened. Three and a half years later, he was still making the same wage \u2014 plus tips, which he said averaged about $600 a month.<\/p>\n Sign up for the This Week\u2019s Top Stories newsletter to get the latest stories delivered to your inbox<\/p>\n THANK YOU!<\/p>\n You’re all set.<\/p>\n CLOSE\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \u201cI have not seen an increase in pay, despite other things going up in price,\u201d he told Phoenix New Times while picketing in February. Rent and grocery prices have gone up, he said, and he now lives with two new roommates to keep costs down. \u201cI never really minded using coupons, but now it is imperative,\u201d he added. To make ends meet, he had to cut into his savings and picked up a second job delivering packages for the company Fetch.<\/p>\n While his pay hadn\u2019t changed, his level of marijuana expertise<\/a> had. When helping a customer pick out their next high, Jacobo said he asks customers \u201call sorts of questions\u201d to help them identify the best product, a task that has \u201cincreased tenfold\u201d since he first started the job. These questions include whether they\u2019re looking for \u201cspecial effects\u201d \u2014 such as something that\u2019ll make them sleepy or energetic \u2014 and how experienced they are.<\/p>\n \u201cWorkers are just asking to be compensated fairly for the work that they do and the contributions that they have to the business,\u201d Drake Ridge, the spokesperson for UFCW Local 99, told New Times in February. \u201cFrom the moment workers organized, wages have been a top consideration.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Curaleaf is one of the largest cannabis companies in the world by revenue and operates 150 dispensaries and 21 cultivation sites across 18 states. The Curaleaf Midtown Phoenix location, at Central Avenue and Thomas Road, is one of 16 dispensaries the company operates in Arizona. Another Curaleaf location along Camelback also unionized a month after the Midtown location. However, the workers there have yet to reach an agreement on a contract with the company.<\/p>\n The road to a union contract wasn\u2019t an easy one for Curaleaf Midtown Phoenix workers. In September 2023, workers went on strike to protest \u201cunjust termination and unfair unilateral changes,\u201d according to a press release. In July, the National Labor Relations Board ordered the company to rehire<\/a> a budtender and union leader who had been fired from the location. Then, this past February, budtenders picketed the location amid deadlocked contract negotiations. Three months later, a contract was officially ratified.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNo matter the obstacle, Midtown workers never lost hope and never stopped organizing,\u201d wrote UFCW Local 99 President Jim McLaughlin in a press release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A line snaked out the door at Curaleaf’s midtown location on North Central Avenue on the first day…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":793523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,1589,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-793522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-phoenix","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116567528247298262","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}