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The union has paid for polls and focus groups to test voters' attitudes on legalization for next year (those polls, conveniently, found support for a "professionalized workforce" as well as recreational cannabis for adults, Araby told the Sacramento Bee). Araby also sits on the American Civil Liberties Union task force, chaired by Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, that is supposed to release recommendations for legalization ballot language this summer.
And Araby is involved in the push to pass a bill that would, for the first time, regulate California's cannabis industry at the state level. He wants to make sure that any regulations passed are friendly to labor. "For us," Araby says at his one-man office in an Art Deco building in downtown Oakland, "two things need to be in every bill." Those things are ensuring that dispensary owners allow union organizers into their shops and don't speak ill of labor, and instituting a workplace training program similar to the ones in New York and Minnesota.
The cannabis bill currently under consideration in the state Legislature would create a new Office of Medical Cannabis Regulation under the purview of Gov. Jerry Brown. It would require commercial cannabis enterprises at every step of the supply chain to acquire licenses. It also would create minimum training standards for workers at licensed dispensaries and grow sites.
Such an "apprenticeship program" is a rare thing in the private sector outside of laborers or building trades, but it's a notion that's gaining traction. Both Brown and President Obama have called for more apprenticeship programs. "Everyone is pushing it, because it works," says Carol Zabin, a labor economist at UC Berkeley's Labor Research Center. "Our economy produces a lot of low-wage jobs, and this kind of job training" — in which the industry makes a direct investment in the quality of its workers — "protects the industry from going the really low-wage route."
Just who would administer a cannabis apprenticeship program, however, isn't clear. This will be a point of contention for the rest of the summer. The union, predictably, wants it to be the union. The industry, just as predictably, believes it has a good handle on things. "We all agree there needs to be standards for workers," says Nate Bradley, executive director of the California Cannabis Industry Association, a Sacramento-based trade group with whom UFCW shares a lobbyist, San Francisco-based Platinum Advisors. "You're dealing with a psychoactive substance — you should have some knowledge of what you're selling to people.
"But there should be a choice" of who provides the training, Bradley adds. "We're opposed to mandatory provisions here."
It's unclear how hard UFCW will push for its agenda. The situation is precarious: This is the fourth year in a row that the Legislature has considered a regulatory bill for the marijuana industry, and at no time has the Legislature been closer to passing one. The bill sailed out of the Assembly with Republican support, but it needs to clear a few hurdles in the Senate before it reaches Brown's desk. To have the union pull out and oppose the bill would be stunning, but not unthinkable.
Meanwhile, UFCW is unapologetic about using the Legislature to achieve its ends. "Workers need to have a voice in what goes on in their workplace," Araby says. "If that has to be guaranteed through legislation, so be it."
Marijuana's speedy shift from a fringe cause celebre to the billion-dollar Green Rush it is today could have been predicted. After all, weed was the world's most popular illicit drug; demand has never been an issue. Yet the quick shift surprised the union, which now has a new breed of cannabis entrepreneur to try and deal with. Gone are the activists. Now there are investors.
"In a few short years, we went from guys in jeans and tie-dye, to guys in bad suits, to guys in very expensive Canali suits," UFCW aide Ferro says.
The newcomers also have new values. Today's cannabis industry has a very strong libertarian streak that's more in line with Silicon Valley's anarcho-capitalism than with true-blue Democratic populism.
At the end of June, the National Cannabis Business Association held its annual conference in Denver, where it threw a $2,700-per-person fundraiser for a presidential candidate: Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul. If this is where weed is going — libertarian and investor-fetishizing, just like tech — then that is bad news for workers.
Some cannabis startups have the same worker problems as some of Silicon Valley's highest-valued companies. The drivers who work for Eaze, a company that promises to deliver marijuana ordered from a smartphone in as little as 10 minutes, are not employees but independent contractors. Fittingly, Eaze calls itself the "Uber of marijuana." Just like Uber drivers are on their own if there's an accident, Eaze drivers assume all the risk involved in driving around the city with 8 ounces of cannabis packaged for sale, something done at their peril even in San Francisco. Last year, an independent delivery driver was pulled over and charged with three felonies by District Attorney George Gascón.
These issues show how far cannabis has come to being a legitimate industry. Like other industries, marijuana is now dominated by capital and the cult of entrepreneurship. In a way, it shows how the union's early efforts — all aimed at getting politicians and the public to drop Reefer Madness rhetoric and take notice — have borne fruit. "At first we went top down. Now, we're fighting the top," says Rush, who says he doesn't feel betrayed by union-doubting industry figures like Harborside's DeAngelo, to whom Rush introduced pols like Newsom. "This is the natural course of every industry."
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