Sun Extractions Workers in Hamilton Join UFCW Local 360

Workers at Sun Extractions, a cannabis products producer in Hamilton, voted to join United Food and Commercial Workers Local 360, the union announced April 15, adding 12 more employees to New Jersey’s growing cannabis labor movement.

The vote is the latest step in Local 360’s Cannabis Workers Rising campaign, which aims to set labor standards across the state’s legal marijuana sector. It’s also part of a broader pattern: New Jersey’s cannabis industry has unionized faster and more consistently than almost any other emerging sector in the state.

Hugh Giordano, UFCW Local 360’s director of organizing, said the Sun Extractions vote signals something larger than one shop in Mercer County. “New Jersey’s cannabis industry is stronger today, thanks to this vote by Sun Extractions workers,” Giordano said. “Sustainable success for businesses, employees, and communities starts with fair treatment, strong standards and shared commitments. That’s how jobs in the cannabis industry become long-term careers, and it’s the future these employees are working towards.”

Giordano has been representing labor interests for 26 years. He told reporters that younger cannabis workers are increasingly motivated by health benefits, specifically the prospect of aging off their parents’ insurance plans and having nothing to replace them. “The younger generation has strong feelings for worker rights,” he said.

That generational push is landing in a state that’s already friendlier to organized labor than most. New Jersey had an estimated 612,000 union members in 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, representing 14.7% of the workforce. That ranks ninth highest among all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Nationally, union membership has dropped well below its mid-century peaks, but New Jersey has held steadier than most.

Local 360 and its counterpart UFCW Local 152 have driven most of the organizing wins in the state’s cannabis sector. In December 2025, Local 360 announced that workers at NJ Leaf dispensaries in North Brunswick and Freehold voted to join the union. Before that, in July 2025, Local 152 members at the Columbia Care cannabis cultivation facility in Vineland ratified their first union contract, wrapping up a years-long push for representation.

The wins keep stacking up.

In January 2026, New Jersey enacted new labor protections specifically for cannabis cultivation workers, closing loopholes that had left them without full labor rights because they were previously classified as agricultural workers. That classification, a holdover from exemptions built into federal labor law going back to the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, had long kept farmworkers and certain cultivation employees outside the reach of standard collective bargaining protections. New Jersey’s new law changed that at the state level.

For the 12 workers at Sun Extractions, the vote means they can now bargain collectively for wages, benefits, and working conditions. Hamilton isn’t a place that usually shows up in cannabis industry coverage, which tends to cluster around dispensaries in bigger markets. But the extraction and production side of the business has its own workforce, and Local 360’s campaign makes clear it isn’t leaving those workers out.

The cannabis sector is still young in New Jersey. Legal recreational sales began in 2022, and the workforce is still taking shape. Union organizers see that as an opportunity: build strong standards early, before wage structures and benefit packages calcify into something harder to change. That’s the logic behind Cannabis Workers Rising, and the Sun Extractions vote, covered when it broke, is exactly the kind of incremental win the campaign depends on.

Twelve workers. One facility. Another contract to negotiate.