Missouri Cannabis Workers Seek Union Vote After Federal Ruling

Forty-six post-harvest workers at Proper Cannabis’s St. Louis cultivation facility filed a union election petition this month, adding momentum to an organizing wave at the processing tier of Missouri’s cannabis supply chain — and citing a federal labor ruling that eliminated the key legal argument cannabis companies had used to contest worker organizing rights.

United Food & Commercial Workers Local 655, which filed the petition on the workers’ behalf with the National Labor Relations Board, is the same union that won a two-year election fight at BeLeaf Medical’s Sinse facility in south St. Louis earlier this month. Both facilities sit at the post-harvest end of the supply chain — the departments that turn harvested cannabis into the packaged flower, pre-rolls, and processed goods that reach dispensary shelves.

“Thanks to the recent NLRB ruling we have the opportunity to sit at the table and make it better for us and the others to come,” said Katie Hazelwonder, a trainer in Proper’s post-harvest department who helped lead the organizing effort.

The Ruling and What It Means for Processing Operations

On April 23, 2026, the National Labor Relations Board issued a decision in the BeLeaf Medical case that had held Sinse workers’ ballots sealed since 2024. BeLeaf had argued that its post-harvest workers qualified as agricultural laborers — a category excluded from federal labor protections since the law’s original passage in 1935 — and therefore couldn’t form a union under federal law. The board rejected that argument and affirmed that those workers are covered employees with full organizing rights.

The board’s analysis turned on what post-harvest cannabis workers actually do. At the Cherokee Street facility, workers ran harvested plants through mechanical trimming machines, cured product for up to two weeks in dedicated rooms, packaged cannabis into precisely measured units, produced pre-rolls using industrial fill equipment, and entered compliance data into Missouri’s state regulatory tracking system. They worked in separate departments from cultivation and harvest crews with no interchange of duties. That set of operations, the board found, bears far closer resemblance to manufacturing than to farming — and the agricultural exemption doesn’t reach it.

The precedent is meaningful but not universal. The board specified that each case still requires individual analysis based on the specific duties and circumstances involved. A cannabis company in another state could still raise an agricultural exemption challenge. What the ruling does eliminate is the automatic assumption that post-harvest processing work sits outside federal labor law — and it does so with a clear framework: once workers are running mechanical equipment, managing curing cycles, packaging finished products, and maintaining compliance records, the agricultural claim is unlikely to hold.

As previously covered on MyCannabis, the Sinse workers’ two-year ballot fight ended with their votes being counted and the union certified after the federal board’s ruling settled the classification dispute.

Missouri Settles the Question by Statute

The federal decision landed on the same day Gov. Mike Kehoe signed HB 2641 — legislation primarily known for restricting hemp-derived intoxicants to licensed dispensaries, but which also contains an explicit statutory reclassification of cannabis workers under state labor law.

The bill covers everyone employed in Missouri cannabis operations: cultivation, processing, manufacturing, distribution, retail, and support functions. It states that none of this work constitutes agricultural labor for collective bargaining purposes, and directs that cannabis employment — including work in climate-controlled indoor cultivation and processing facilities — be treated as covered employment under Missouri’s collective bargaining framework. The labor rights provision takes effect August 28, 2026.

That statutory language does something the federal ruling alone doesn’t: it removes the need to litigate the agricultural exemption question case-by-case within Missouri. Any operator in the state’s supply chain is now on notice that workers across those departments have explicit state-level collective bargaining rights before the state law even takes effect. Hazelwonder said the combination of both actions changed how her team saw their options. “Both of them put together, I feel like we’re unstoppable at this point.”

Wages and Conditions Drive the Proper Petition

The Proper Cannabis workers are organizing around pay and workplace safety. Post-harvest workers at the facility say they received under 50 cents per hour in raises during the last increase cycle, while other departments at the same cultivation site received dollar-figure amounts. Workers also describe persistent air quality concerns: mold-inspection work on dried cannabis is a daily task, and workers say three employees in the department developed pneumonia over the past year. The company is currently upgrading building ventilation, according to workers.

Proper Cannabis declined to comment.

If the petition proceeds to an election and workers vote to unionize, the company would be required to bargain collectively on wages, hours, and working conditions. The Sinse workers — who organized with the same local and performed similar post-harvest and pre-roll work — offer a recent reference point for what a prolonged company challenge looks like and how it resolves.

For Missouri cannabis operators running processing and distribution operations, the labor picture has shifted considerably in the past two months. The post-harvest tier — the department that takes harvested plant and turns it into finished, shelf-ready product — now operates under overlapping federal precedent and an incoming state statute that both point the same direction.