“We already got our raises. Our [personal time off] is taking effect. Bonuses have been handed out…and job security is in place.”
By Rebecca Rivas, Missouri Independent
It’s been nearly a month since Key Cannabis Dispensary employees in Springfield ratified their first collective bargaining agreement that includes wage increases, bonuses and additional time off to workers.
And employees are feeling pretty high.
“Now that the contract has been ratified, we’re rocking and rolling already,” said Sally Powell, a retail associate at Key Cannabis Dispensary. “We already got our raises. Our [personal time off] is taking effect. Bonuses have been handed out…and job security is in place.”
Powell was among the employees who in 2022 voted 6-3 to unionize, under the representation of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 2.
The agreement is a milestone in Missouri’s still-young marijuana industry, where dispensaries have proliferated since recreational sales began in 2023 but organized labor has made only limited inroads. The Springfield workers are just the second group of cannabis employees in the state to secure a union contract, and their four-year path to one offers a glimpse at how difficult it can be to turn a successful organizing vote into tangible workplace protections.
The delay was partly because the previous owners, Bloom Medicinal, sold the dispensary in January 2024 to Elevate Cannabis.
Nico Pento, chief legal officer for Elevate Cannabis, said it was a unique situation because the company was “thrown into the middle” of the unionization process, as part of its acquisition of a few facilities from Bloom.
“A lot of what we settled on is not much different than what we do as an organization,” Pento said. “But, I respect the right of everybody to want to be represented by a union if they so choose. I’m happy we could come to an amicable agreement.”
While the company has a merit increase system in wages, Pento said this store’s employees were on a hiring freeze during the lengthy collective bargaining process.
“We needed to get through the entire [collective bargaining agreement] negotiations before we could make any adjustments to compensation,” Pento said, “so the increases that we gave them were really more of a true-up to get them to where we felt they would have been had they not chosen to unionize.”
The ratification bonus was similarly something the company decided was the “right thing to do,” he said.
“They had gone over two years without getting a wage increase,” he said, “so we wanted to find a way to properly compensate them for that kind of two-year delay.”
Powell said the contract creates more stable scheduling and clearer disciplinary guidelines. One of the most important provisions for Powell were the non-discrimination, anti-harassment and inclusion protections.
“With the cannabis industry just being a super inclusive industry as is,” she said, “it’s nice to just have some extra language to protect that. Being gay myself, we have quite a few gender-fluid people in our facility. It’s just been great to be able to be your true self and not have to worry about who you are.”
Elevate Cannabis is owned by a group of family and friends based out of the Kansas city area, he said, and the company has 14 dispensaries and two manufacturing and cultivation facilities. It is among the largest cannabis companies in Missouri.
Another reason it took so a long time to get a union contract ratified, Pento said, is because the labor negotiation process “is definitely a little old school.”
“Everything is in person,” he said. “You’re trading drafts back and forth in person. It’s not like a typical, you know, sale or acquisition where you’re exchanging red lines and can bang it out in a couple weeks.”
However, Pento commended the union representative, Saul Guerrero, for being reasonable and easy to communicate with.
Chad Price, UFCW Local 2 director of collective bargaining and retail servicing, praised the workers for their hard work and dedication.
“We want to welcome them to our union family,” Price said. “Together, we will continue building contracts that improve lives and strengthen our workplaces for years to come.”
