Competing Visions of Worker Power: NJ Cannabis Workers Vote Out Their Union as Organizing Surges Elsewhere

Nearly two years after New Jersey cannabis workers cast their ballots, employees at Green Thumb Industries voted 94–13 to decertify United Food and Commercial Workers Local 360 in a ballot count completed June 29, 2026, and certified by the National Labor Relations Board on July 14, 2026. Approximately 270 employees across four Green Thumb Industries cannabis facilities were covered by the decertification election.

The lopsided vote landed the same month that employees at Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain, and other national parks voted 317–11 to join the National Treasury Employees Union. And a July 15, 2026, Economic Policy Institute report found that tripling U.S. union density to 30% would shift over $1.2 trillion annually to workers and raise median pay by 14.5%.

The divergence—organizing wins, trillion-dollar theoretical gains, and workers voting to exit their existing union—raises urgent questions about when and why collective bargaining delivers enough value to justify the commitment.

Green Thumb Industries operates cannabis dispensaries and production facilities at four New Jersey locations covered by the decertification election: Paterson, Bloomfield, Paramus, and a main cultivation and distribution facility in Hackettstown. The decertification petition was filed in October 2024 by Michael Potter, a Lead Warehouse Technician at Green Thumb Industries.

The election was held November 7–8, 2024, but ballots were not counted until June 29, 2026, due to blocking charges filed by UFCW Local 360. The union challenged 74 additional ballots, but the challenges did not alter the outcome.

"The UFCW did not advance our interests here, and many of us believed we would be better off without them," Michael Potter, Lead Warehouse Technician at Green Thumb Industries, said. "This was our opportunity to exercise the right to a secret-ballot election, which was denied to us when the union was installed. We are grateful the votes were finally counted, and we have determined for ourselves what the majority of Green Thumb employees want."

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation provided free legal assistance to workers seeking decertification at Green Thumb Industries. The foundation stated that UFCW Local 360 was originally installed via a card check rather than a secret-ballot election.

"We are proud to have assisted the workers at Green Thumb Industries as they fought for their right to a secret-ballot election; however, workers should not have to wait the better part of two years just to have their votes counted," Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, said.

The national parks union election included workers at 12 sites across the Mountain West, including Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain, and Glacier national parks. NTEU Chapter 347 will represent approximately 650 non-supervisory National Park Service employees across about 12 park sites in the Intermountain Region. The vote, tallied 317–11 on June 17, 2026, demonstrates that workers continue to choose unionization where they believe collective bargaining can deliver workplace improvements.

The EPI report, titled "The case for tripling union membership: How rebuilding union power would strengthen workers, the economy, and our democracy," was authored by Heidi Shierholz, Celine McNicholas, Josh Bivens, Jennifer Sherer, Ben Zipperer, and Margaret Poydock. It finds that higher union membership would significantly narrow racial wage gaps and reverse about one-third of the rise in income inequality since 1979. The research quantifies the movement's theoretical promise on an economy-wide scale, but individual workplace outcomes depend on whether specific unions deliver enough wins to justify dues and worker commitment.

Potter's framing of card-check recognition as denying workers a secret-ballot vote reflects the National Right to Work Foundation's position, though both card check and elections are lawful paths to union representation. UFCW Local 360 has not publicly explained what it delivered or failed to deliver during its tenure at Green Thumb Industries.

The cannabis industry's regulatory volatility, rapid growth, and evolving labor market conditions create a challenging environment for unions seeking to prove value through traditional contract wins and workplace protections. Decertification votes often hinge on whether a union has secured a first contract and demonstrated tangible gains before worker frustration or employer opposition erodes support—a window that can close quickly in contested workplaces.

Anti-union organizations like the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation use decertification cases to argue against collective bargaining as a system, leveraging individual union failures to discredit the model that research shows could shift over a trillion dollars annually to workers. The tension between economy-wide promise and workplace-specific performance means that labor's expansion depends on improving both organizing capacity and the ability to service, bargain, and retain members once a union is in place.

That productive tension forces the labor movement to reckon with a democratic reality: workers will test unions in real time, and the movement's legitimacy rests on closing the gap between what collective bargaining can deliver in theory and what any given union actually delivers in practice.