Phoenix Curaleaf workers decertify union days after ratifying contract

In a nearly unanimous vote, employees at the Curaleaf dispensary on Camelback Road voted to decertify their union just days after a four-year contract negotiation resulted in guaranteed wage increases.

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The move comes as a surprise, given how hard Curaleaf employees fought to form a union and win a contract.

In July 2022, employees voted to unionize at the Curaleaf location. The company challenged that move in court. A National Labor Relations Board judge upheld the vote, and a federal court affirmed that decision in September 2024 after Curaleaf appealed. Throughout that time, employees’ efforts to negotiate with the union were unsuccessful. In February 2024, the NLRB found that Curaleaf had unlawfully refused to bargain with the union and ordered it to participate in contract talks. 

Employees continued to protest outside the building over the stalled negotiations. In the meantime, an employee at a different Curaleaf location was fired in retaliation for union organizing, the NLRB found. Curaleaf was forced to reinstate him. That location ratified its contract with the company in May. 

However, as of early May, unionizing efforts at the Curaleaf location at 10th Place and Camelback Road appear to have failed. In early April, Curaleaf budtender Jennifer Mooney filed a petition to decertify or dissolve the location’s union, which is organized under the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 99. Essentially, the location’s 25 employees would cast ballots to indicate whether they still wanted a union.

Before that vote took place, the union’s bargaining unit at the location reached a tentative agreement with the company. The contract solidified the benefits employees currently had and implemented guaranteed wage increases and additional protections, said UFCW Local 99 spokesperson Drake Ridge. On April 21, employees voted to ratify that contract, though that vote had “fairly low participation,” Ridge said. “Only a handful of people came out and voted for it.” 

Despite finally reaching a contract after a four-year fight, Curaleaf dispensary workers voted 14-1 to decertify the union just 10 days later. That nullified the contract, which Ridge called “an unfortunate loss for workers.” An objection to the vote was filed on May 8 with the NLRB, which has not yet ruled.

“This is part of the reason why companies drag their feet in negotiations: to draw the process out, so that workers get frustrated and then decide to decertify,” he added. “This is really an unfortunate example of that in a situation where workers were so close.”

Curaleaf did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Phoenix New Times.

In a press release from the foundation, Mooney thanked it for assisting her and said, “My colleagues and I didn’t appreciate how UFCW officials ignored our interests and tried to force a contract that we didn’t like.”

When reached by phone, foundation spokesperson Mohamad Ali Kharda told New Times that Mooney was unable to comment further because of the NLRB complaint. Ridge said Mooney wasn’t involved in the initial authorization vote in 2022, wasn’t on the bargaining committee and didn’t vote in the election to ratify the contract.

In an emailed statement to New Times, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation president Patrick Semmens said it was the organization’s understanding that the decision to remove the union was “motivated by the employees’ general frustration with the union’s poor communication regarding the process of bargaining.” He added that the proposed contract “obviously didn’t meet the needs of workers who rejected it,” calling the contract vote a “rushed attempt to block the decertification campaign.”

However, the company made it difficult for the union to speak directly with employees, according to two unfair labor practice complaints filed by UFCW Local 99 against Curaleaf. The two complaints, filed about a month apart in April and May, claim that Curaleaf created “the impression among its employees that their union and protected rights are under surveillance,” threatened to trespass and call the police on its employee and union representative and made “unilateral changes without bargaining with the union.” Additionally, the union requested access to the store several times to speak with employees but was told by Curaleaf’s labor relations staffers that they weren’t allowed inside the store, specifically the break room.

The NLRB has yet to rule on those complaints.  

These actions by Curaleaf are a “really typical union-busting tactic” that “made it really difficult to access employees and talk to them,” Ridge said. He also said that the location saw significant turnover — the company hired a bunch of new employees in the few weeks leading up to the two elections, which Ridge said “happens often and can result in a poor outcome.”

“Workers are coming in; they’re being told about union dues and that there’s going to be an election and we don’t have enough time to explain the four years of progress leading up to it,” Ridge said. “When you have the biggest union-busting firm in the world involved in litigating a case like this, it’s hard to get workers the right information to fully understand their rights.”