While there are many studies that focus on cannabis consumers – health outcomes and public safety issues related to the legalization and use of cannabis – little attention has been paid to workers in the industry.The small amount of occupational safety and health literature that does exist regarding the cannabis industry focuses on the biological, chemical, and physical hazards associated with cannabis flower and its production into various cannabis derived products.However, the hazards that affect the safety of cannabis workers extends beyond the flower and stems from the industry’s long and complicated history with sexual abuse.In a 2016 article by Reveal News, female trimmers from the Emerald Triangle of Northern California shared stories of sexual abuse including being asked to trim topless and forced to perform sexual acts in order to receive payment.Similarly, in 2019, Vice also published an article documenting unfair work practices within the industry including 10 to 15 hour shifts, and sexual harassment of female bud tenders from shop owners.Until recently, cannabis flourished in the black market where it was produced, cultivated and distributed with little to no formal monitoring or regulation.Given the risks associated with being involved in the cannabis industry prior to legalization, it was a very secretive industry to navigate.The secrecy associated with the industry helped to establish a “culture of silence” against reporting abuses in the workplace, particularly regarding sexual harassment and exploitation.Because of the industry’s history, there is a need to assure that workers entering the business are protected and treated with respect, as with any other workforce.Institutionalized sexism permeates several aspects of the industry and cannabis companies are not exempt for marketing strategies that use sex appeal to sell products.For example, the brand Ignite pairs images of half-naked women with animals, and poorly formed cannabis puns ,drying racks showcasing the misogyny and harassment that exists within the industry.The sexism which breeds harassment is not only evident through advertising, it is also apparent in hiring practices as women have historically been hired to not only sell product but to simultaneously serve as attractive promotional models for a brand.
Although this is more common in illegal retail fronts known as “trap shops,” it is a distinguishing characteristic of the industry.This in turn has led to accounts from workers describing instances of overtly touchy customers and co-workers as well as instances of their product knowledge being undermined because of their appearance and gender.Although there does exist a report documenting the prevalence of sexual abuse in the cannabis industry published by New Frontier Data, a company whose primary mission is to collect and analyze data relevant to cannabis to better inform businesses and investors, the report is not publicly available to better examine its methodology, study sample, or results.Despite challenges with accessibility, the major findings of the report have been published through cannabis related news outlets and suggest that, of the 1,741 workers in the cannabis industry who participated, there are high levels of workplace violence relative to other industries.Sexual harassment is also a widespread issue in the industry, with nearly 27% of participants reporting they have either witnessed it and 18% reporting they have experienced it themselves.An additional one-third of participants reported that they knew someone who had been sexually harassed in the industry.When filtered to only include responses from female employees working in non-ownership or management positions , the percent of workers who have experienced sexual harassment decreased slightly to 14%.Concurrently, the percentage of those who know of someone who has experienced harassment increase to 49% , indicating the effect of power structures in the likelihood to experience harassment.As the cannabis industry continues to expand within California and across the United States, it is becoming closely intertwined with the labor movement through its growing union representation.Among the many groups that have fought to legalize cannabis, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union was the first union heavily involved in the 2010 campaign for Proposition 19, a previous attempt to legalize the recreational use of cannabis in California.Although the campaign failed, UFCW continued to support the market for cannabis in California and especially in Los Angeles.
In 2012, the city of Los Angeles attempted to ban all sales on cannabis.UFCW Local 770 fought the ban in order to protect the jobs of dispensary workers in the city and their efforts resulted in Proposition D, passed in 2013, that protected 135 medical marijuana dispensaries that had earned their licenses before 2007.UFCW continued their efforts to protect jobs in cannabis with their support of the 2016 campaign for MAUCRSA.As part of MAUCRSA, UFCW negotiated labor peace agreements in medical and recreational use laws.The provision deems that any cannabis shop in California with 20 or more workers is allowed the opportunity to join a union.However, despite the labor movement’s progressive ideology that serves to protect workers’ rights, it is important to address the complicated history that labor unions also face with sexual harassment as protecting women’s rights and workers’ rights have not always been advocated for concurrently.For example, during the Jenson v.Eveleth Taconite Co.class-action lawsuit against workplace sexual harassment, the United Steelworkers Local 6860, responsible for representing the female workers and plaintiffs in the case, was found to be an inadequate source of protection for their female members reporting incessant harassment and abuse from coworkers.Union representatives refused to file sexual harassment grievances against other union members.Such responses to sexual harassment by labor unions have largely been shaped by the sexism rooted in the birth of the labor movement.It is the same male-centered philosophy that breeds the sexual harassment unions are intended to protect workers against.The first labor unions were over represented by male workers and as such, they discouraged women from reporting harassment by other union members, reinforcing labor unions as organizations perpetuating patriarchy.Despite the tumultuous past unions have had with sexual harassment, many are now taking a proactive approach to address the issue.UNITE HERE, in particular, has worked on addressing sexual harassment in the hospitality industry in cities across the country.Their Chicago Hands Off Pants On campaign, involved a member survey which found 58% of hotel workers and 77% of casino workers had been sexually harassed by a guest.The survey gave the union the data it needed to push for protections through both collective bargaining and eventually a city wide ordinance to protect both union and nonunion Chicago hotel workers.
Moreover, in 2016, California members of the Service Employees International Union began their Ya Basta campaign and succeeded in winning statewide legislation in California requiring all janitors in the state to receive training on rape and sexual harassment prevention.Because of the growing relationship between labor unions and the cannabis industry, labor unions serve as a unique point of intervention for addressing sexual harassment in this particular workplace.Specifically, it useful to consider the social-ecological model proposed by Bronfenbrenner.His model had been referenced and adopted to fit several public interventions including violence prevention.The individual, relationship, community and societal levels of the social ecological framework focus on personal factors, interpersonal relationships involving family, friends workplaces and neighborhoods, and broader structural factors such as health systems and polices, respectively.Each level of the model can be addressed to holistically grapple with the issue of violence,cannabis drying including sexual harassment in the workplace.Therefore, this particular study seeks to explore the community level as an opportunity for intervention, specifically through the growing relationship between the cannabis industry and labor unions.Although the surveys served as the primary source of data for this study, in-depth interviews were conducted in order to provide more descriptive and clarifying insights into the context of sexual harassment that occurs in dispensaries.I was particularly interested in learning from workers how organizational factors may exacerbate experiences of harassment or serve as protective factors.This information was not collected through the survey as it was more exploratory in nature and hearing from workers directly would offer the most accurate insight.Themes of organizational risk factors were drawn from the data by closely examining examples of harassment described by workers.Their responses often did not focus on the details of the incident itself but its antecedents and consequences.Additional themes captured from the interviews included apathy towards experiences of harassment and a desire for union led training focused on worker’s rights and de-escalation tactics.Although being a victim of harassment was not a requirement for participating in the interviews, all workers described varying levels of experience with sexual harassment in their work environment.Experiences ranged from personally being a target of harassment, witnessing their co-workers being harassed or learning about instances through co-workers.Among the interviewees, two identified as men, and the rest as women.The age of interviewees ranged from 27 to 32 years of age.All interviewees, except one, had previous experience in illegal dispensaries as well as non-union represented shops.This is important to note as respondents often used their past work experiences as a point of reference for describing their current workplace as well as recent experiences with harassment and their company’s responses.Similar to the survey results, interviewees most often cited customers as the primary sources of sexual harassment in their workplace followed by co-workers and the occasional manger.
Perpetrators were also often described as men and experiences with harassment ranged from verbal being the most common form experienced to explicit exposure and physical groping in the workplace.Verbal harassment experienced by workers was often in the context of customers repeatedly flirting with them or being “overly nice,” to the point where it made them uncomfortable during an interaction.Many of these experiences were shaped by their organization’s approach to sexual harassment as organizations are responsible for protective measures that influence a worker’s capacity to confront perpetrators in their work environment.This exploratory study sought to shed light on the issue of sexual harassment in retail store fronts of the cannabis industry as a newly legalized and emerging industry.Findings from this studied aligned with previous research documenting the high prevalence of sexual harassment in other retail and service sector industries.Of the 117 study participants, 63, 68, and 46% reported experiencing at least one instance of sexist hostility, sexual hostility and unwanted sexual attention, respectively, in their place of work during the past 12 months.Although conducting a comparative analysis between the between prevalence of sexual harassment in cannabis dispensaries and other retail and service industries goes beyond the scope of this study, past literature on harassment in retail provides a reference point for responding to hypothesis one.For example, a study investigating sexual harassment in the restaurant industry found 50% of women and 47% of men experienced scary or unwanted sexual behavior while at work.While the two studies may vary in their methodologies and exact study population, they reach the same conclusion.Sexual harassment is an occupational hazard of retail and service sector industries.Therefore, a cursory comparison suggests harassment in the cannabis industry is equal, if not more prevalent than in other comparable industries.Studies regarding hazards of the retail and service sector industries also point towards customer sexual harassment as the specific context of harassment in retail fronts.The combined results of the multivariate analyses revealing gender identity to be a significant predictor of harassment, and the majority of perpetrators reported to be customers in this study highlights the harassment of women identifying bud tenders from customers as the specific workplace issue needing to be addressed.Furthermore, although only the bivariate analysis for sexual hostility revealed gender identity to be significantly associated with experiencing specific sub-scales of sexual harassment , results from the multivariate analysis, confirmed hypothesis 2a; gender identity is a significant predictor of all three sub-scales of harassment.Women were more likely to experience a greater frequency of harassment than the men in the workplace.This finding aligns with the literature on sexual harassment in the workplace, confirming women as the primary targets and victims of sexual harassment.These findings were also triangulated through interviews as sexual harassment was always discussed in the context of a female bud tender targeted by customers, co-workers and mangers alike.Only models one and two of the multivariate analyses alluded to hypothesis 2b regarding the racial and the ethnic differences in the likelihood to experience harassment.Model one predicting all form of sexual harassment and model 2 predicting sexist hostility indicated Black respondents experienced a greater frequency of harassment than White respondents.