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Cannabis's independence is also not an entirely bad thing for the worker. Unlike in other industries, the path from bottom-rung employee to cannabis business owner can be very short. Skills learned at a dispensary counter or in a grow room can be easily ported to one's own enterprise.
At the same time, a skilled workforce with standardized training will be valuable to capital as well. One entrepreneur I spoke to, Ata Gonzalez of G Farma Labs — a company that produces pre-rolls, chocolates, and hash oil — was an Oaksterdam University student at around the time Rush organized the workers there. Now, Gonzalez is planning to open a 90,000-square-foot production facility that could employ 75 people. When I ask him who will work there and if he's been talking to the union, he responds quickly: "Do you have their number?"
Cannabis still presents labor's best chance in memory to ensure a developing industry that appears poised to be worker-friendly. "It's our future," Rush says, simply.
The industry's new libertarian, "we'll handle this ourselves" tone is an attitude shift that's also a sign of cannabis's maturation from movement to huge commercial enterprise. But as the balance of power between labor and capital is being determined, it's being done in an old-school way: by political connections and in back rooms, worlds still fairly foreign to marijuana. "Something we really don't have access to is going to make or break our ability to move forward," one cannabis advocate told me on condition of anonymity. "That's really fucking annoying."
In earlier years, when politicians' doors were closed, the cannabis movement welcomed the union. Now, says Araby, "It's 'we don't need outsiders to tell us how to run our business.' They sound like any other corporate person."
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