BCGEU strike highlights struggle for Okanagan pot shops
The BC General Employees Union strike continues and with BC Liquor Distribution Branch workers on the picket line it’s leaving cannabis retailers in a tough spot.
The distribution branch handles almost all of the province’s cannabis wholesaling, and it charges a 15 per cent proprietary fee for retailers and producers who qualify for direct delivery.
Jaimie Miller-Haywood is budtender and spokesperson for a cannabis industry group in South Okanagan who have been lobbying against overregulation.
She said that while she understands the need for the BC General Employees Union to push for higher wages it has put the cannabis industry in a difficult position.
“I'm, first and foremost, all for workers' rights. And with the rate of inflation that we've all been dealing with recently, I understand the need for more income for union workers. At the same time, all of these different private industries are now suffering,” she said.
The union has been on strike for weeks but distribution branch workers represented by the union joined the strike on Sept. 22.
Now that the union’s strike has escalated and BC Liquor Distribution Branch workers have joined the picket line, cannabis stores are struggling to get product.
"It's really only been like, what, two weeks now?" Miller-Haywood said. "It's absolutely terrifying, because everybody's already operating on razor thin margins ... One unfortunate regulation after the other that's choking us out, and then we have to deal with the strike that completely bottlenecks our supply coming from the producers going into the retailers,” she said.
Miller-Haywood said the fee is unfair, and the strike has forced retailers to either go without product or pay the fee which puts a strain on retailers and producers.
“It's absolutely criminal, in my opinion, because the exact same fee in the alcohol industry is 3.5 per cent,” she said. “People's bank accounts are absolutely hemorrhaging.”
She said the proprietary fee is an example of how the cannabis industry is over-regulated and overtaxed, leaving retailers and producers with a razor-thin line between staying open and shutting down.
Smaller-scale growers, those who produce less than 3,000 kilograms a year, are the only ones who qualify for the direct delivery and everyone else has to go through the distribution branch.
Retailers who got all of their deliveries through the distribution branch had to set up direct delivery programs with growers or processors when the strike brought union workers to the picket line.
Miller-Haywood said she hopes that the strain the strike and the proprietary fee are putting on the cannabis industry is a wake-up call for the government to realize that the cannabis industry is precarious because it’s overtaxed.
“If the licensed industry collapses, because it's on the verge all across the country, then I promise you the underground is going to be doing just fine,” she said. “Nobody wants to go into the underground... but let's be real here, consumers aren't going to stop consuming weed.”
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