Key Cannabis Workers Ratify Missouri’s Second Cannabis Union Contract

Workers at Key Cannabis Dispensary in Springfield have their first union contract in force, nearly four years after they voted to organize — and the raises, bonuses, and added paid time off the deal delivers are already hitting paychecks, the Missouri Independent reported August 24, 2026.

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 2 announced the ratification on July 30, 2026, capping more than three years of bargaining. The agreement is the second union contract covering cannabis workers in Missouri, arriving weeks after employees at a High Profile Cannabis dispensary in Columbia ratified the state’s first.

The bargaining unit is small: ten eligible voters, covering full-time and regular part-time hourly dispensary agents at the store at 751 S. Glenstone Ave. In the election held in October 2022, the workers voted 6-3 to join UFCW Local 2, and the National Labor Relations Board certified the union as their representative on November 3, 2022. What followed, rather than a quick first contract, was a change in ownership and years of negotiation.

The contract itself goes well beyond a wage line. It secures wage increases and ratification bonuses, with an additional wage increase due at the contract’s first anniversary in July 2027. It adds new bonus and incentive programs, additional paid time off, sick leave, and paid bereavement leave. On the workplace-rules side, it guarantees stronger nondiscrimination, anti-harassment and inclusion protections, more stable scheduling, and clearer disciplinary guidelines. It removes at-will status, putting discipline and termination under a just-cause framework.

Sally Powell, a retail associate at the store and one of the workers who organized the 2022 vote, described the deal as the payoff of a long campaign in the union’s ratification announcement: “With our union, we have the comfort and security of not being at-will employees, and with this contract, we’ve made our voices heard and negotiated the benefits we need to thrive on the job.”

Why a 6-3 Vote Took Nearly Four Years to Become a Contract

The Springfield unit organized under Bloom Medicinals of MO-Dispensary 1, the store’s original owner, which filed as the employer in the NLRB case record. Bargaining had barely established itself when the store changed hands: Elevate Cannabis acquired seven Missouri dispensaries in January 2024, including the Springfield location, bringing its retail count in the state to eleven at the time.

An acquisition does not erase a union certification. Federal labor law treats the buyer of a unionized operation as a successor employer, obligated to recognize and bargain with the incumbent union — so the contract fight carried over to the new owner rather than starting over. Elevate’s chief legal officer, Nico Pento, told the Missouri Independent the company was “thrown into the middle” of an organizing process already underway when it bought the store, but described the outcome as an amicable agreement.

One consequence of the long negotiation sat in the workers’ pay. While the contract was being bargained, the store’s employees were effectively frozen out of the company’s merit-increase system; Pento said the raises in the final deal were structured as a true-up to bring the workers to where they would have been, and that the unit had gone more than two years without a wage increase, which the ratification bonus was meant to address.

Missouri’s Cannabis Workforce Is Organizing in Waves

The Springfield contract lands in the middle of a broader organizing run across Missouri’s cannabis industry, which added thousands of jobs after voters legalized adult-use sales in November 2022 and recreational sales began in February 2023. Three first contracts have now been ratified in a matter of weeks, according to the UFCW: the High Profile agreement covering 30 dispensary employees in Columbia, the Key Cannabis deal in Springfield, and a June contract covering 40 employees across 16 CBD Kratom stores statewide.

Behind the contract wins sits a legal fight over who in a cannabis operation gets to organize at all. Missouri operators had argued that post-harvest employees (the workers who trim, package, and manufacture products) were agricultural laborers excluded from federal organizing protections. The NLRB rejected that argument on April 23, 2026 in a case out of a St. Louis processing facility, the board’s first national ruling on the question, and the same day Missouri’s governor signed a state law declaring cannabis processing work non-agricultural for collective-bargaining purposes. The rulings removed the industry’s broadest line of resistance, and union elections and petitions have spread since.

Elevate, meanwhile, is among the larger operators the organizing wave could reach. The Kansas City-area company, founded in 2021, runs 14 Missouri dispensaries under the Key Cannabis banner alongside cultivation and manufacturing operations, with stores in Arizona and Illinois as well, according to the company. UFCW Local 2’s leadership framed the Springfield ratification as a foundation: director of collective bargaining Chad Price said the local intends to keep building contracts across the industry. With the first anniversary raise already scheduled for July 2027, the Springfield agreement now becomes the reference point for what a Missouri dispensary contract looks like.