NORML.ORG California: State's Largest Labor Union Endorses Marijuana Depenalization Initiative

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September 23, 2010 - Sacramento, CA, USA

Sacramento, CA: The California council of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the state's largest union, has endorsed Proposition 19, The Regulate, Control & Tax Cannabis Initiative of 2010. If passed, the measure would legalize the private adult possession and cultivation of marijuana, and allow local government the option to regulate the plant's commercial production and sale.

In a letter to the campaign, union President Bill A. Lloyd wrote that passage of Prop. 19 would generate new tax "revenues [that] will help the state and local governments protect and invest in jobs we need to provide for our families.

"[W]e look forward to joining you in any way we can to help pass Proposition 19," the letter concludes.

The SEIU has some 750,000 members in California.

Proposition 19 has also gained support from the council that oversees political activities for the United Food and Commercial Workers in California and four other western states. The Northern California council of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union, Communications Workers of America Local 9415 and Sign Displays & Allied Crafts Local 510 have also endorsed the campaign.

Other groups backing the campaign include the California state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Latino Voters League, the National Black Police Association, and the California Council of Churches IMPACT.

Californians favor the measure by a vote of 47 percent to 38 percent, according to the latest statewide poll, published on Wednesday.

For more information, please visit: http://yeson19.com.

    updated: Sep 23, 2010

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Medical Marijuana Workers in California Join Union Local

In what cannabis fans were calling a high-water mark for their movement to legitimize the drug, about 100 employees of medical marijuana-related businesses in Oakland were welcomed to the ranks of unionized workers on Friday after voting to join the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 5.

The move — which union officials said was the first time medical marijuana employees had been so represented — was hailed by the local’s leadership, who called their new members ‘great workers.”

“This is a natural for us,” said Ron Lind, the president of Local 5, whose 26,000 other members work primarily in groceries and the meat industry. “Our union’s primary jurisdiction is retail.”

The move was also welcomed by Richard Lee, the founder of Oaksterdam University, the medical marijuana trade school whose Oakland campus employs some 60 newly unionized members in its dispensary, gift shop and nursery. (For plants, not children.) Mr. Lee that said his employees were already offered health benefits and paid vacation, but that the union imprimatur was an important milestone in the battle to bring marijuana more into the mainstream.

“It’s one more step towards ending federal restrictions,” said Mr. Lee, a leading proponent of a November ballot measure which would legalize, regulate and tax the drug in California. Marijuana, legal for medical use in California and more than a dozen other states, is still prohibited by federal law.

Officials in Oakland, which has an unemployment rate of more than 17 percent, also cheered the move — and the movement — as a potential boon for the city.

For the workers themselves, however, their new status as union members was somewhat of a personal triumph.

“Now I can go home to my parents and they can see it’s a good thing and a normal thing,” said Cassie Leone, a tattooed 24-year-old who works at a local marijuana dispensary. It made her feel like a “hardworking human being,” she said. “Which is what I am.”

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