Employees of cannabis multistate operator Green Thumb Industries want to vote on whether they can remove United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 360 as their union representative.
Michael Potter, a lead warehouse technician for Chicago-based Green Thumb, filed a petition asking for the vote on behalf of about 275 of his co-workers at five New Jersey locations, according to a news release from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRWLDF).
Attorneys from the NRWLDF, the federal agency that enforces labor law, are providing free legal aid to Potter.
New Jersey doesn’t have a right-to-work law, which means union officials can demand that workers pay union dues or fees to stay employed.
Union officials also have monopoly bargaining power, which allows them to speak for every worker in the unit – even those who voted against the union or oppose its presence, the release noted.
“Many of us believe the UFCW does not advance our interests and that we would be better off without the union in our workplace,” Potter said in a statement.
“We simply seek a secret ballot election that was denied to us when the union was installed so we can determine what the majority of Green Thumb employees want.”
The petition seeking the vote was filed just days before the National Labor Relations Board stripped workers of their right to challenge “card check” drives, which allows employees to submit decertification petitions to force a secret ballot vote.
“If Mr. Potter had filed his decertification petition just a week later, workers at Green Thumb Industries would be denied their right to vote out union officials who seized power over them in a hasty and coercive manner,” NRWLDF President Mark Mix said in a statement.
