Unions are going to pot!
With high hopes of boosting membership, powerful unions representing food-industry workers will campaign to legalize the medical use of marijuana in New York, The Post has learned.
The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union and affiliated United Food and Commercial Workers International Union — together representing 1.5 million members — plan to unionize potentially thousands of workers across New York involved in the production and dispensing of cannabis if a medical-marijuana bill becomes law.
“We’ll be advocating for medical marijuana. I hope someday people buying medical marijuana in New York will look for the union label,” RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum said.
“We want to make sure that if the cannabis industry comes to New York, that it is regulated and that it provides good jobs with decent standards for workers. We want to be on the ground floor.”
“I expect the workers will be RWDSU members. First, there has to be workers. Second, we have to organize,” Appelbaum added.
Also, he said, legalizing medical marijuana is “ethically the right thing to do.”
Law-enforcement officials, however, were left fuming.
“The unions’ endorsement of the current legislation suggests the bill is really about wholesale distribution of an intoxicating but potentially very profitable drug, not the targeted distribution of medicine to a small group of seriously ill people suffering from debilitating pain,” said Bridget G. Brennan, the city’s special narcotics prosecutor.
Union muscle could be a game changer in persuading the Legislature and Gov. Cuomo to approve medical weed after years of inaction, Albany insiders said.
Cuomo has been hazy on the issue. He wants to decriminalize possession of small amounts of pot found during stop-and-frisks but has opposed medical weed.
Appelbaum said he will urge the entire labor movement to join the campaign.
Cannabis is a multibillion-dollar industry that is expanding as union membership is on the decline. Eighteen states — including New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts — as well as Washington, DC, now allow marijuana for medical use. Colorado and Washington state authorize it for recreational use.
The UFCW has already created a medical-cannabis and -hemp division to represent 3,000 cannabis workers, mostly in California and Colorado.
It has also campaigned for marijuana laws in other states and in recent months has quietly worked with Assemblyman Richard Gottfried (D-Manhattan) and Sen. Diane Savino (D-SI) to craft the New York bill.
The union support for medical pot is expected to be announced at a press conference in Albany tomorrow, sources said.