Jess Rolland and Morgan Combs: The Legislature should support good jobs for all cannabis workers

The cannabis industry is built on the backs of cannabis growers. When we worked on the environmental support specialist and propagation teams at Phat Panda’s Grow Op Farms in Spokane Valley, we sweated in full-body personal protective equipment as we cultivated plants, handled hazardous chemicals, operated in poorly ventilated rooms, hauled around dozens of 50-pound bags, and fed organic waste into wood chippers in all kinds of weather.

We had signed up for the hard labor, but we hadn’t signed up to be voiceless. We spent years attempting to form a union to improve our working conditions, but in the process we ran smack into outdated federal restrictions that prevented us from organizing. House Bill 1141, a new proposal from state Rep. Lillian Ortiz-Self, would give cannabis agricultural workers that voice by allowing them to collectively bargain under Washington state law. We urge you to tell your state representatives to support this legislation to even the playing field in the industry and to help right historical wrongs.

All we’re asking for is fairness. Right now, the processors who turn cannabis into products can unionize, the budtenders who sell those products can unionize, but workers involved in growing the plants cannot.

This denial of the protections and opportunities afforded to the rest of the workers in the sector feels particularly unfair because growers face the same low pay and lack of job security as they do. Despite the highly specialized work, many growers earn less than a dollar more than minimum wage. That’s not enough money to live in the communities they serve. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s latest annual report, they’d need to earn double that rate to afford a one-bedroom apartment in Spokane.

Given the low pay, it’s no wonder the turnover rate in growing facilities seems so high. Some days, bosses tasked us to spend a bunch of time training 10 or 15 temps with little or no experience in cannabis cultivation, and then those workers would just leave for another job shortly thereafter. It was impossible to build any kind of stable team dynamic when the “team” changed on a daily basis.

When safety issues arise cannabis agricultural workers have little recourse. While it’s true they could file complaints with the Department of Labor and Industries, regulators can only slap the company on the wrist with fines. Growers don’t want to rely on bankshot, bureaucratic regulatory processes to create the kind of change they want to see in their workplaces. They want a real seat at the table – just like their colleagues in the industry.

In a small but meaningful way, passing HB 1141 would also help address historical wrongs rooted in slavery. In the 1930s, Southern Democrats pushed to exclude agricultural workers from the National Labor Relations Act, denying labor protections to a workforce composed mostly of Black and poor white tenant farmers. (About 40% of Black workers in the 1930s labored on farms, and nearly all Black farmers lived in the South.) Echoes of this racist policy continue today, where a majority white ownership class now enjoys profits from growing and selling cannabis plants after the state spent decades throwing disproportionally large numbers of Black and Brown people in jail for doing the same job. Continuing to exclude cannabis agricultural workers only serves to carry out this shameful legacy.

Washington lawmakers have long led the way in enacting proactive labor and equity protections at the state level. With the National Labor Relations Board and equity measures of all kinds under attack at the federal level, our representatives must act to protect us here at home.

Morgan Combs was an environmental support specialist at Grow Op Farms. Jess Rolland was a propagation supervisor at Phat Panda. They live in Portland.