Missouri cannabis workers could soon have protected rights to organize.
Both the Missouri House and Senate recently passed a bill that outlaws hemp-derived products. The Senate added a section to the bill that would give cannabis workers the right to organize, form, join and assist labor organizations.
As the Missouri cannabis industry has grown, more workers have attempted to unionize.
But employers have previously kept cannabis workers from unionizing as they have argued they are agricultural workers, which excludes them from organizing under the National Labor Relations Act.
In 2024, employees of BeLeaf Medical, a Missouri cannabis company in St. Louis, petitioned to unionize. They were challenged by BeLeaf Medical, which argued they were agricultural workers.
The new version of House Bill 2641 would specify that cannabis workers are different from agriculture workers.
Liz Ell is the registered lobbyist for United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local 655. She said this addition to the bill would specify that cannabis employment is not agricultural labor.
"There's no more room for argument's sake in this gray area of trying to classify them as agricultural labor rather as just employees of the cannabis industry," Ell said.
Jake Hummel, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations President, agrees with the bill's classification.
"These are the folks that are actually taking the plant, drying it out," Hummel said. "They're in a laboratory setting, in climate-controlled environments. And we think they should have the same right to organize as any other workers in a warehousing industry like that."
Hummel said there's been recent success in organizing Missouri cannabis workers, and that warehouse workers deserve the same.
"Workers that are involved in that are looking for the same protections and the same advancement in life that every other worker is," Hummel said. "They want to make sure they have some kind of health insurance, they want to have some type of retirement benefits. They want to be paid a wage that helps them be able to feed their families."
The bill, including this addition, now goes to Governor Kehoe's desk.
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