Just down the road from the center of Pittsfield's industrial past, a nascent labor effort is underway.
About 25 Berkshire Roots growers and trimmers are in the process of negotiating their first-ever contract with the Pittsfield-based cannabis company.
During the early months of the pandemic in 2020, the workers chose to join the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Approaching three years later, the company and the union have not yet settled on contract language.
"We have made some progress, but the company is doing their best to drag things out," said Drew Weisse, a local organizer for UFCW 1459. Berkshire Roots "caused a lot of people who support the union to either quit, or make them feel like the company was just going keep strong-arming them."
The chief executive of Berkshire Roots, James Winokur, declined to discuss how negotiations with the union are going, saying the company and the union agreed not to talk about the matter in the press.
The unionized employees are negotiating for "basic labor protections," Weisse said, such as livable wages, benefits and standard procedures for grievances and discipline.
Depending on experience, a cultivation employee's starting wage at Berkshire Roots is about $15 to $17 an hour, which Winokur said is "competitive" for the industry.
Retail employees at Berkshire Roots' two locations in Pittsfield and East Boston are not unionized.
Weisse said that knitted into cannabis culture is a propensity for activism,...
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