Medical marijuana workers affiliated with a pot-business school Oaksterdam University, which has a Los Angeles outpost, and employees at several other Bay Area-based cannabis businesses have voted to join the UFCW Local 5. It appears to be a first for California's medical marijuana industry.

The unionization of the workers will be formally announced at a press conference at the Oakland campus of Oaksterdam University Friday afternoon. Union “card-check verifications” have taken place at Oaksterdam's Oakland, L.A. and Sebastopol campuses, and at Oakland's Patient ID Center, Blue Sky Coffee Shop, Bulldog Cafe, Oaksterdam Gift Shop, and AMCD, Inc., according to a statement from the Drug Policy Alliance. Another business, Agri-Med, is in the process of being verified, according tot he DPA.

Oaksterdam and Blue Sky Coffee Shop owner Richard Lee is the main financial backer of a statewide ballot initiative that asks voters to fully legalize marijuana and tax its sales.

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