Only a few cannabis workers in Illinois are unionized 2 years after full legalization. Organizers say corporate owners have put up fierce resistance.

Cannabis workers pushing to unionize amid complaints of low wages and rough working conditions claim they’ve faced stiff resistance from the corporate pot firms that employ them.

In January of 2020, with the blessing of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, employees at Cresco Labs’ cultivation center in Joliet voted to become the first Illinois cannabis workers to unionize, joining United Food and Commercial Workers Local 881.

But the historic vote held within weeks of marijuana being fully legalized in Illinois came after the National Labor Relations Board sided with Cresco and exempted the site’s growers from the vote, deeming them agricultural workers and thus prohibiting them from joining a union under federal law.

A source familiar with the process claimed Cresco’s move to cut out a large chunk of the workers served as “the beginning of union-busting attempts in Illinois.” A Cresco spokesman, however, said the company merely wanted the law to be followed.

Employees at 11 Illinois dispensaries have since voted to join either UFCW Local 881 or Teamsters Local 777, though one election is being contested and formal allegations of retaliation have been levied in relation to another. Some efforts have fallen short and others are ongoing, but only two contracts have so far been ratified — one for the workers in Joliet and another for employees at Cresco’s Sunnyside dispensary in Lake View. [Read more at Chicago Sun-Times]