Prairie State Wire

After grossing upward of $1 billion in their first year of operations, marijuana industry workers in Illinois have started discussions about unionizing.

“The industry has unfortunately just provided jobs, and not the well-paying careers that we all thought cannabis was going to generate,” Moises Zavala, director of organizing at Local 881 of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, said, the Chicago Tribune reported. The union is representing cannabis workers in Illinois.

In February, workers at the Sunnyside dispensary in Chicago’s Lakeside neighborhood emerged as the first to in the state to ratify a union contract.

Approximately three months earlier, workers at Cresco Labs in Joliet became the first to ratify a cannabis union contract.

Two other dispensaries are now voting on whether to unionize.

Since recreational marijuana use was legalized in the state in January 2020, marijuana sales across the state have skyrocketed to $1.03 last year, according to the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. In 2021, sales were on an even swifter pace, reaching $232 million by February.

Marijuana is now legal in 36 states, 15 of which allow recreational use, paving the way for the industry to employ 321,000 full-time workers, according to the 2021 Leafly Jobs Report.