The BC Budtenders’ Union says they have served a strike notice at a Canna Cabana store in Vancouver.
In a post shared on UFCW 1518’s social media accounts on Tuesday, October 8, and confirmed to StratCann in an email, the union said the store’s workers were prepared to strike to address what they say is a shortage of hours at the Davie Street Canna Cabana in downtown Vancouver, leading to understaffing. UFCW is the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.
“Members at this store have made it clear they are prepared to strike to seek a fair contract that addresses a shortage of scheduled hours,” wrote the union in a post. “It’s not in the interests of staff or customers for a dispensary to be understaffed.”
Canna Cabana is part of a chain of cannabis retailers across Canada and is owned by parent company High Tide, which operates 184 stores as of October 7, including eight in BC. BC doesn’t allow a company to operate more than eight cannabis stores in the province. Four are located in Vancouver, the other four are spread out across the province in Fort St John, Prince George, Kamloops, and Cranbrook.
A representative for High Tide told StratCann that the company did not wish to weigh in at this time.
“Out of respect for the collective bargaining process, we will not be commenting at this time.”
In March of this year, the union announced that employees at the Davie Street Canna Cabana had joined the BC Budtenders Union. At the time, the union said staff were pushing back against low wages, minimal protections, and limited job security.
A post on the union’s Facebook page at the time said the two-year contract for those employees includes a 6.5% wage increase, retroactive pay on all wage increases to November 11, 2023, doubling the call-in premium to $1.00 per hour, and “timely and fair redistribution of cannabis samples from sales reps.”
BC began allowing producers to provide samples to retailers in 2023.
The BC Budtenders Union has slowly been gathering members since it became the first union to represent budtenders in Canada in 2020. There has been an increase in cannabis store employees joining unions in the past year, especially in BC and Ontario.
As of April 2024, the BC Budtenders Union said it represents workers at nine cannabis businesses and 16 locations.
Fifteen of these locations are cannabis stores. It also represents workers at a cannabis production facility in BC, the first cannabis production facility to successfully unionize in Canada, following a 2020 court ruling that found the company had unfairly penalized workers for trying to unionize.
Not all employees have stuck with their decision to join a union, though. Employees at Eggs Canna on East Hastings in downtown Vancouver voted to join the union in early 2022 but changed course shortly after, voting to decertify union membership, meaning it no longer acts as their bargaining agent.
A media representative with UFCW 1518 told StratCann they currently have around 150 members in 12 cannabis stores and one commercial grower. In April 2024, the union told StratCann that UFCW represented workers at nine cannabis businesses in BC (including one grower) and 17 locations.
In December 2023, Trees Cannabis, which has several unionized stores, announced that it and its subsidiaries filed for and were granted creditor protection under the CCAA. Two of four unionized Trees locations in BC have since closed (Alpha St and Fort St).
Employees at a Kiaro Cannabis in Port Moody, BC recently joined the union.
UFCW 1518 is British Columbia’s largest private sector union, with more than 27,000 workers in the retail, industrial, cannabis, healthcare, professional, and agricultural sectors.
In September, about 40 workers at five The Joint cannabis dispensaries in the city of Saskatoon joined UFCW Local 1400. This marked the first time cannabis workers have organized with this union in Saskatoon.
Featured image via Google Maps
