OLNEY, Md. (June 4, 2025) – Today, United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 400 Union announced workers at Sweetspot cannabis dispensary in Olney, Md. have voted to ratify their first union contract.
“We formed a union to make Sweetspot a better place to work and this contract does just that,” said Kai D., who has worked at Sweetspot for a year and a half. “We won a boost in pay, guaranteed raises every six months, extra holidays, and so much more. We are proof positive that a union can make a big difference in our industry.”
The contract has several improvements, including:
- $2.00/hour increase in starting pay
- Guaranteed raises every six months
- Time and a half on Sundays
- 3 extra holidays per year
- Vision, dental, and health insurance
- Guaranteed employee discounts
- Seniority privileges
- Just cause protection from unfair discipline
- And more!
Ballots were cast on Tuesday and workers voted unanimously to approve the collective bargaining agreement. The staff unionized with UFCW Local 400 in September of last year, around the same time another Sweetspot location in Exeter, R.I. unionized with UFCW Local 328.
The Sweetspot Olney workers are part of a growing wave of cannabis dispensaries in Maryland that have unionized, including: the Apothecarium locations in Burtonsville, Md. and Cumberland, Md.; Story Cannabis locations in Hyattsville, Md. and Mechanicsville, Md.; Potomac Holistics in Rockville, Md.; Zen Leaf in Germantown, Md. and Zen Leaf in Towson, Md.; PharmaCann Verilife Dispensary in Westminster, Md.; and MaryMed, LLC in Hurlock, Md., among others.
For more information on UFCW’s work across the cannabis industry, visit ufcw.org/cannabis.
###
United Food & Commercial Workers Local 400 is led by President Mark Federici and represents 35,000 members working in the grocery, retail, health care, food processing, service and other industries in Maryland, Virginia, Washington, D.C., West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. www.ufcw400.org