Manufacturing workers at Smiling Bud in Ridgefield, N.J., joined UFCW Local 360 earlier this month, extending the union’s growing presence across the state’s legal cannabis industry.
Smiling Bud operates a 52,000-square-foot cannabis facility which houses the company’s extraction, manufacturing, packaging, and fulfillment services. Employees there manufacture edibles, concentrates, and drinks, as well as white-label, private-label, and co-manufactured products for cannabis brands.
The 10 workers are looking for improvements to wages, holiday pay, vacation, and healthcare contributions.
For Smiling Bud employee Jessyca Padilla, the decision to organize was about having a meaningful voice in the workplace and showing solidarity.
“I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t scary,” Padilla said. “Taking a stand and speaking up for yourself and your co-workers can feel incredibly vulnerable, especially when you don’t know how the people above you will respond. But I also know how much my team cares about this work and about each other. For me, this is about building a workplace where people feel respected, heard, supported, and valued. Unionizing is our way of saying that we believe our voices matter. I’m proud to stand alongside my co-workers, and hopeful that together we can create a better future at Smiling Bud.”
The Smiling Bud vote marks another step in efforts to organize workers across the cannabis supply chain. Through its Cannabis Workers Rising campaign, the union represents workers in retail dispensaries, cultivation, manufacturing, and other areas of the industry.
“Jessyca’s words say a lot about why workers organize,” said Hugh Giordano, UFCW Local 360’s director of organizing. “It takes courage to stand up and say you want a voice in your future, and it takes commitment to join your co-workers in making it happen. Manufacturing workers are essential to developing and creating the products that ultimately reach consumers. And like all workers, they deserve respect, stability and the opportunity to build real careers as this industry grows.”
An important component of New Jersey’s regulated marketplace, manufacturers transform cannabis into finished products, including concentrates and edibles, and provide production, packaging and related services so brands and retailers can bring those products to market.
“New Jersey cannabis isn’t an experiment anymore. It’s an industry, and an increasingly sophisticated one,” said Sam Ferraino Jr., president of UFCW Local 360. “That means any conversation about its future must include workers throughout the supply chain. From cultivation and manufacturing to sales and retail, it’s the workers who move this industry forward every day. They deserve to have a say in what it becomes. We’re very proud to welcome the workers at Smiling Bud to Local 360.”