United Weed Stand: Managing the Growing Presence of Unions
In September, an administrative court ordered a Massachusetts dispensary operator to bargain with a labor union. Employees of the Insa dispensary in Salem voted 17-11 against joining the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which filed a complaint challenging the results with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). According to NLRB Administrative Law Judge Andrew Gollin’s decision , Insa fired union supporters to send a message that other employees could face the same fate if they voted to unionize, which made the chance of a fair vote unlikely. Gollin was the first judge to apply a recent 3-1 decision by the NLRB in Cemex Construction Materials Pacific LLC that paved the way for workers to unionize without formal elections , establishing a new framework for union representation proceedings. “Under the new framework, when a union requests recognition on the basis that a majority of employees in an appropriate bargaining unit have designated the union as their representative...