The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 360 labor union announced that manufacturing workers at the New Jersey cannabis company Smiling Bud voted to unionize.

Smiling Bud operates a 52,000-square-foot cannabis facility providing services. They include extraction, manufacturing, packaging and fulfillment. Its manufacturing capabilities include edibles and concentrates, along with white-label, private-label and co-manufacturing services for cannabis brands.

They are based in Ridgefield in Bergen County in North Jersey.

For Smiling Bud employee Jessyca Padilla, the decision to organize was about having a meaningful voice in the workplace and standing with coworkers.

“I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t scary,” said Padilla. “Taking a stand and speaking up for yourself and your coworkers 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 coworkers, and hopeful that together we can create a better future at Smiling Bud.”

The Smiling Bud vote represents another step in UFCW Local 360’s efforts to organize workers across New Jersey’s cannabis supply chain. Through its Cannabis Workers Rising campaign, the union represents workers in retail dispensaries, cultivation, and manufacturing, as well as 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 coworkers 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.

For Local 360, organizing manufacturing employees is part of its broader effort to ensure that New Jersey’s cannabis industry creates sustainable career opportunities at every level. Its Cannabis Workers Rising team has been central to the development and stabilization of New Jersey’s legal cannabis industry. They help workers organize and negotiate for better wages, workplace protections, benefits and career opportunities.

“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.”

The UFCW Union and Cannabis Workers

From seed to sale, UFCW is a national leader in cannabis labor organizing and is the official cannabis union recognized by the AFL-CIO. UFCW represents tens of thousands of workers in dispensaries, grow operations, labs, delivery services, manufacturing and processing facilities across the U.S., working with employees and business owners toward the shared goal of a regulated cannabis industry that delivers family-sustaining jobs and is focused on social equity.

The UFCW Union represents over 1.3 million families across the U.S. and Canada. These members work in essential industries such as Retail, Warehousing, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Transportation, the Public Sector, and Cannabis.

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