One of the largest legal cannabis companies in California announced on Monday that it would radically renew its work practices following a mass immigration raid in two facilities of the company last month. The raid led to the death of a worker and the arrest of more than 360 people, including, according to government officials, 14 minors.
Glass House Brands announced that it had “finished their relationship” with the two labor contractors that had provided workers to cannabis greenhouse operations in Camarillo and Carpenteria. He also announced that he had “made significant changes in labor practices that are beyond legal requirements.”
Those include hiring experts to analyze workers' documents, as well as hiring the services of the consulting company to advise the company on best practices to determine the eligibility of employment. The firm is directed by Julie Myers Wood, former ICE director under President George W. Bush.
The company also said that it had signed a new “Paz Labor” agreement with the Teamsters International Brotherhood.
Glass House officials refused to comment publicly beyond what was in a press release, but a source close to the company said the officials wanted to “make sure that we never have a situation that we had on July 10. We cannot make this happen again.”
That day, federal agents in masks and riot teams broke into the operations of Glass House in the counties of Ventura and Santa Bárbara in the largest work incursion of the State's ICE in recent memory. The agents chased the workers in panic through greenhouses and deployed less lethal tear and projectile gases in protesters and employees.
A worker, Jaime Alanis García, died after falling three floors from the roof of a greenhouse trying to evade the capture. Others were bloody by broken or hidden glass fragments for hours in the ceilings or under the leaves and the plastic cover. More than 360 people, a mixture of workers, relatives of workers, protesters and passers -by, were arrested, including at least two US citizens, one of them a veteran of the US Army.
Following the raid, the Secretary of National Security, Kristi Noem, said that Glass House had been attacked because “we knew, specifically the cases we had built for weeks and weeks, that there were children there that could be trafficked, exploited, that there were individuals involved in criminal activities.”
To date, neither national security nor the United States Department of Justice have announced any legal action regarding the alleged traffic and exploitation of minors.
In his press release, Glass House said that only nine of his direct employees were arrested; All others collected were employees of their labor contractors or were “not associated with the company.”
Regarding the government's statement that had found children who work in Cannabis, the company said: “While the identities of the alleged minors have not been revealed, the company has been able to determine that, if those reports are true, none of them were employees of Glass House.” California's labor law allows up to 12 years old to work in agriculture, but workers must be 21 years old to work in cannabis.
The RAID devastated the glass house and its workforce. Numerous workers were arrested or missing, terrified to return. Those who remained were so distressed that the company called Duel.
Throughout the broader world of legal cannabis, people were also shaken. Glass House, backed by rich investors and presents an elegant corporate image in the wild world of cannabis in California, has been known for a long time as the “Walmart of Weed”. Many in the California cannabis industry feared that the raid in Glass House was a sign that the Federal Government's fire against cannabis, which is legal in California but not yet federal, had come to an end.
Following the raid, the agricultural workers of United and other organizations warned agricultural workers who were not citizens, even those with legal status, to avoid working in cannabis because “cannabis remains criminalized according to federal law.”
In his statement, Glass House said the search warrant served in the company on the day of the raid he sought “evidence of possible immigration violations.” A source close to the company said that officials have not had more contact with the federal government since the raid.
Some agricultural labor defenders were not impressed by the announcement of the renewed labor practices company, saying that it was agricultural workers who would pay the price.
Lucas Zucker, executive director of Central Coast Alliance United for a sustainable economy, or cause, said Glass House was using agricultural labor contractors to avoid responsibility “while their workers are torn from their families with wives.”
“This shows the double standard of our legal system, where corporations can benefit from immigrant workers on which their businesses depend, but hands are cleaned when it becomes inconvenient,” he said. He added that “many agricultural workers are still struggling to navigate this mess of labor contractors and have not been paid for the work they did in Glass House.”
A source close to Glass House said the company's officials want to make sure that all those who worked on the day of the raid receive all the salaries that are owed to them.
The company's officials authorized all workers to receive payment until 11:30 pm on the day of the raid, because the workers who had finished their shifts could not leave because the immigration agents were blocking the doors. The source said that agricultural labor contractors had been paid and all workers should have released wages.
“We don't want anyone to be short,” said the source.
