Jacob Tyler Dunn
Audio By Carbonatix
Nearly four years ago, employees at Curaleaf Midtown Phoenix 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.
“I’m so excited to finally be a union member,” wrote Brandon Richardson, a Midtown budtender and union bargaining committee member, in a press release. “Now that we have the protection of a union contract and guaranteed raises, I feel like I can finally breathe easy.”
The three-year collective bargaining agreement includes “guaranteed wage increases,” the creation of “progressive discipline and grievance procedures” and protects budtenders’ 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.
Prior to the contract’s 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 — plus tips, which he said averaged about $600 a month.
“I have not seen an increase in pay, despite other things going up in price,” 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. “I never really minded using coupons, but now it is imperative,” 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.
While his pay hadn’t changed, his level of marijuana expertise had. When helping a customer pick out their next high, Jacobo said he asks customers “all sorts of questions” to help them identify the best product, a task that has “increased tenfold” since he first started the job. These questions include whether they’re looking for “special effects” — such as something that’ll make them sleepy or energetic — and how experienced they are.
“Workers are just asking to be compensated fairly for the work that they do and the contributions that they have to the business,” Drake Ridge, the spokesperson for UFCW Local 99, told New Times in February. “From the moment workers organized, wages have been a top consideration.”
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.
The road to a union contract wasn’t an easy one for Curaleaf Midtown Phoenix workers. In September 2023, workers went on strike to protest “unjust termination and unfair unilateral changes,” according to a press release. In July, the National Labor Relations Board ordered the company to rehire 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.
“No matter the obstacle, Midtown workers never lost hope and never stopped organizing,” wrote UFCW Local 99 President Jim McLaughlin in a press release.
