Marijuana jobs are becoming a haven for retail and gastronomy workers

After a year on the front lines, Jason Zvokel traded his 15-year career as a Walgreens pharmacist for another type of drugstore: a marijuana dispensary.

Instead of administering vaccines and filling out prescriptions, he now helps customers understand concentrates, tablets and lozenges. His salary is 5 percent lower, he says, but the working hours are more manageable.

"I'm much happier," says Zvokel, 46, who has worked in retail since he was 18. "For the first time in years, I am not unhappy when I come home from work.

The cannabis industry is experiencing a pandemic upswing: marijuana dispensaries and growers - which were classified as "indispensable" by many states at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis - became an early haven for retail and hospitality workers on leave or had been released. The industry has continued to grow, creating nearly 80,000 new jobs in 2020, more than twice as many as the year before, according to data in the Leafly Jobs Report, which was produced in partnership with Whitney Economics.

An estimated 321,000 Americans now work in the industry, up 32 percent from last year, according to the report, which makes legal marijuana one of the fastest growing sectors in the nation. In other words, there are now more legal cannabis workers in the United States than there are dentists, paramedics, or electrical engineers.

Many Americans reassessed their jobs and career prospects when the pandemic changed their social and professional lives. Retail workers in particular are quitting on a record-breaking scale in search of regular working hours, better social benefits and more career opportunities, which they say they find in the legal cannabis industry.

"There has been a seismic shift from retail and hospitality workers to cannabis," said Kara Bradford, executive director of cannabis recruitment company Viridian Staffing, where she has received up to 500 applications for an open position. "You get the feeling that this is a booming industry that is fun and interesting, with lots of opportunities to move up quickly.

The hourly wages in the dispensers are between 12 and 15 dollars, which corresponds to most jobs in retail and warehouse. But since the industry is still very new, entry-level professionals can often advance to more specialized positions in less than a year, she said.

This surge in cannabis cessation has put pressure on traditional employers - particularly in the 18 states and district where recreational marijuana use is legal - to relax drug testing requirements. Amazon, the country's second-largest private employer, said in June that it would stop screening its employees for cannabis use and support federal legislation to legalize marijuana. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post.) A number of other employers, including retailers, restaurants, and city councils, have also dropped such requirements to attract workers in a job market where job vacancies equal unemployed Americans by 10.9 million to exceed 8.4 million.

Workers' rights groups are pushing for broader unionization in the cannabis industry, calling this a critical time for the creation of well-paid and reasonably sheltered jobs. With the right policies, they say, the industry could become a pipeline for middle-class jobs, much like manufacturing used to be.

"It's rare to have the opportunity to shape an industry from the start," said David Cooper, an analyst with the Economic Policy Institute, a left-wing think tank. "There is an urgent need to put guard rails in place for well-paying middle-class jobs now before cannabis is legalized at the federal level and really takes off. Otherwise, these jobs could quickly look like existing retail and agricultural jobs, which are often the worst jobs in the world of the economy. "

Since California allowed the medical use of marijuana 25 years ago, there has been a drive towards legalization across the country. Most US states - 37 plus the District - now allow the medicinal use of marijuana, and a growing number of them are legalizing the drug entirely. (The last time New Mexico, Connecticut, and Virginia did so this summer.) As a result, business has skyrocketed. Legal cannabis sales rose nearly 60 percent to $ 19 billion last year and will grow to $ 41 billion by 2025, according to Wall Street research firm Cowen.

For Zvokel, the cannabis industry became a respite from the stresses of working for a national retail chain, where its 10-hour shifts were often extended to 12 or 13 hours. When he stopped in April, he was giving 30 to 40 coronavirus vaccines a day while trying to keep up with his usual duties. Added to this was the constant pressure to increase sales and fill out the prescriptions as quickly as possible. As a salaried manager, he received no overtime pay and said he hadn't received a raise in at least four years.

"Since I didn't ascend, I felt like I was basically moving backwards," said Zvokel, who is now one of 10,000 marijuana workers represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. "People left and right resigned and they asked me to do a lot more than I could physically do."

Fraser Engerman, a spokesman for Walgreens, said the company hired more people and increased its budget for pharmacy operations and training during the pandemic.

"We are committed to increasing support to [our pharmacists] so that they can continue to provide excellent patient care," he said.

Five months after taking office, Zvokel said the pharmacy is hiring new employees quickly and that there is a sense of camaraderie among his colleagues. Labor economists say the industry has defined itself by the desire to create favorable working conditions - both to attract employees and to gain broader legitimacy. Many employers also feel pressured to treat workers well because the cultivation and sale of marijuana is still illegal at the federal level, according to Raymond Hogler, a professor at Colorado State University who studies marijuana industrial relations.

"There are many problems with working with marijuana: dust, safety concerns, hazards with harvesting the plant itself," he said. "And, frankly, there is additional pressure to treat workers well because the industry wants to show that it offers good, solid jobs."

However, some workers report that the work can be physically demanding and poorly paid. Devon Doram, 28, took a job at a medical marijuana pharmacy in Lebanon, Pa, at the start of the pandemic. at. After his last job at an animal feed warehouse, he looked forward to working directly with customers.

But Doram, who is black, said he often felt marginalized in a workplace where all managers were white. After a few months, a national conglomerate bought the pharmacy, widening the gap between managers and employees. He quit after eight months and now works for a pest control service.

"I loved going to work and feeling like I could really help people, that I was finally in an area where I could build a career," he said. "But from everything I've seen, there wasn't a lot of variety. There were managers willing to help me move up in the company, but that just didn't happen."

Last fall, Brianna Price quit her job as a grocer to become a "budtender" - an industry term for salespeople - in a pharmacy. In the year she worked there, she was promoted three times and is now responsible for all purchasing and nine employees.

"I really wanted to use the time during the Covid to reassess my life and make a career change," said Price, 31, from Midland, Michigan.

Revenue at the Hempire Collective in Loomis, Michigan, where she works, has more than doubled in the last year and is about $ 500,000 a month, according to co-owner Mario Porter. He has increased his staff in the pharmacy from seven to 12 employees and wants to hire even more this year. Many of his new employees, Porter said, come from retail outlets they left during the pandemic.

On his desk are dozens of applications and hundreds more submitted online.

"This summer was extraordinary," he says. "Most of my employees come from the retail sector because they know what the most important thing about this job is: listening to customers and meeting their needs."

In South Bend, India, Ashlyn Marshall, 28, recently quit her full-time job at a RV manufacturer to work in a marijuana dispensary. Because of her anxiety during the pandemic, she realized that "a work-life balance is more important to me than money". She makes $ 14.50 an hour, compared to $ 16 in her last job.

"I got cursed at by customers every day while I was doing three people's work," she says. "It was just a complete burnout."

In her new position, the tone between managers and employees is calmer and friendlier.

"Management is much more human," she said. "When I make a mistake and apologize, the general mood is, 'That's okay, we all make mistakes. Let's fix this together.' I've never seen that before. "