Joliet State Lawmaker Ventura Backs Striking Pot Workers

JOLIET, IL — As workers at three local marijuana dispensaries, including two in Joliet, continue to strike, the employees have gotten support from an Illinois state senator who says the workers deserve a share of the more than $ 1 billion in pot profits they are helping to produce.

Sen. Rachel Ventura (D-Joliet) said that pot sales in Illinois generated $1.5 billion in 2022 and that employees at RISE dispensaries who went on strike last week over the lack of a fair contract should benefit from those profits.

In Fiscal Year 2022, Ventura said that Illinois cannabis sales generated $466.8 million in state taxes on the $1.5 billion in sales. Illinois total dispensary sales reached over three billion in total over the last three years, she said.

Workers at the dispensaries in Joliet and Niles went on strike last week after months of negotiating for a fair contract and are seeking better wages and retirement benefits, representatives from Local Teamsters 777 said. The last straw came, union officials said, when employees were forced to remove pins they were wearing calling for a fair contract by officials from Green Thumb Industries, which runs the dispensaries.

“Working families are struggling across Illinois while companies like RISE make enormous profits,” Ventura said in a news release this week. “It doesn’t have to be this way. I hope that both sides are able to negotiate a mutually beneficial contract that enables these workers to better support their families.”

Teamster General President Sean O’Brien passed on a message to cannabis workers on social media, writing “We’re fighting to turn this industry into what it needs to be: long term well-paid careers. No more low wages, no more high turnover, no more disrespect. Teamsters stand with you.”

Workers voted to unionize last year and have been negotiating their first contract. A Joliet RISE employee told Patch last week that many of the employees have found a career in cannabis work and that they deserve more respect from their employer.

Local Teamsters 777 President Jim Glimco told Patch on Thursday that union representatives have not retuned to the bargaining table since the strike started.

Christopher Guardo, a Joliet resident who has been with RISE for three years, said that he has been promised that he would be promoted by the company multiple time to shift supervisor. Yet, he said, he is still only making $17 per hour as a patient care specialist.

“I’m on strike because of how cannabis is grown and sold by RISE. We all have our different reasons for being out here,” Guardo said, adding that Green Thumb Industries does not use safe practices to grow its product and that employees are exposed to “excessive” mold.

Other employees have said that they have worked in a condition in which construction dust and paint fumes have made the work environment less than ideal.

The Joliet dispensaries have about 50 employees and several have quit, Ventura said, because of low pay and poor work conditions.