The legalization of pot sounds like a license to print money in a lot of places. People demand the product and are willing to pay. It only has a bit of legal status in several states, and since it’s still illegal on the federal level, there’s no competition across state lines.
It’s about as good as it gets for an industry.
So cue the labor unions, who are always trying to muscle in on the action. From The Daily Caller:
Labor unions are vying for new, dues-paying members from California’s growing cannabis industry as a state law legalizing recreational pot is only days away from taking full effect.
After California residents passed Proposition 64 in 2016, the Golden State became the largest market in the U.S. for recreational marijuana and boosted the already growing weed industry. Proposition 64 will be fully implemented in a matter of days at the start of 2018, according to the Los Angeles Times.
More than year since Proposition 64 passed, unions such as United Farm Workers (UFW) and United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) are fighting to capture union dues from the thousands of freelance marijuana workers across California, the Associated Press reports.
“We would hope they respect our jurisdiction,” UFCW spokesman Jeff Ferro told the AP.
In the illegal drug trade, this is what you might call a protection racket.
Bear in mind that there are no claims of employee mistreatment in California’s legal marijuana industry. No one is clamoring to unionize besides, you know, the unions.
Unions today have nothing to do with preventing abusive employers from, say, locking workers in the factory, as they did over a century ago. Now they are about sustaining their existence. Think about it — workers would gladly pay union dues if those dues paid off for them. Just like any other transaction in the free market. If the unions have to bully their way in, that’s because the supply/demand curve has already cut them out.
Unionized pot farms will invariably lead to artificially high prices and fewer jobs, driving the legalized industry right back into the black market where it just came from. As a result of their meddling, unions will simply empower the cartels again.
But it’s not like unions care about that. They just want power. Who cares if their bullying encourages violence?
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