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Venice Beach Care Center is a city recognized consumers collective corporation organized under California Health & Safety Codes 11362.5 & 11362.7. We are a not-for-profit organization that exists for the benefit of it’s members.
Venice Beach Care Center is also an accredited member of GLACA (Greater Los Angeles Collective Alliance). GLACA is a self regulated group of collectives that aims to promote safe and responsible collectives in the City of Los Angeles.
VBCC is also now a Union Organized shop. Click on the logo link for more information.
Please check back soon as we offer new online services in the future to our registered members. Thank you for visiting our site. We look forward to serving you and having you as a member.
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http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/05/la_city_hall_marijuana_dispensary_ban.php
What happened behind closed doors at yesterday’s L.A. City Council meeting?
Given the whole closed-door thing, it’s hard to say. What we do know is that before L.A. City Council President Herb Wesson formed a secret huddle that lasted for over half an hour, a soft/sane proposal for pot-shop regulation by Councilman Paul Koretz still had a shot at making its way into ordinance.
But by the time the closed session let out…
… the frontrunner was Councilman Jose Huizar’s alternative proposal, an all-out ban that would shut down every single marijuana dispensary in the city.
(Which Huizar and the City Attorney’s Office actually call a “gentle ban,” because individuals with licenses would still be able to grow or distribute medical weed. Just not with a storefront.)
The council decided to send Koretz’s proposal back through two different City Council committees: the Planning and Land Use Management Committee and the Public Safety Committee. Huizar’s proposal, on the other hand, has already made it into the ordinance phase, and only has to get a final OK from the Planning Committee before coming to a final vote before council.
And city attorney staffers — who are very nervous in general about passing a pot-shop ordinance while a series of conflicting, in-progress court cases still haven’t yielded a definitive ruling on the issue — have expressed much more confidence in Huizar’s “gentle ban.” As the LA Weekly‘s own Dennis Romero once put it, “Trutanich never met a pot shop he liked.”
http://venice.patch.com/articles/medical-pot-dispensary-workers-in-venice-join-powerful-labor-union
- By Paul Chavez
The Venice Beach Care Center is among more than 10 local medical marijuana dispensaries now represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770 union.
The local arm of the nation’s largest retail workers union announced Thursday that it has successfully unionized more than 100 hundred workers at Los Angeles-area medical marijuana dispensaries, including the Venice Beach Care Center.
The powerful United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770 has become the bargaining unit for employees at more than 10 medical marijuana dispensaries, said Mike Shimpock, a UFCW Local 770 spokesman. The union and the dispensaries already have started bargaining on labor contracts, Shimpock said.
UFCW Local 770 also represents other health care workers, including pharmacists and lab technicians, as well as grocery workers, Shimpock said.
“This is the next step in professionalizing and stabilizing this new sector of the health care industry,” said Rick Icaza, president of UFCW Local 770, in a statement Wednesday. “Unionization and collective bargaining bring better training, less turnover, and more stability to the health care industry. This is a positive step towards successfully integrating compassionate care into our system of health care.”
The union’s intention has been to deal only with so-called “white hat” medical marijuana dispensaries that have proper permits, submit payroll taxes, have financial transparency and are diligent about verifying patient status and eligibility, Shimpock said.
“Whether the dispensaries remain in form the way they are now or another form in the future, we feel they are here to stay with medical cannabis and we want to bring it under the mainstream portion of the health care industry by unionizing it,” Shimpock said.
Workers at the dispensaries typically earn between $12 and $17 an hour and usually don’t have health care benefits. Health care benefits will be one of the issues addressed during contract bargaining, Shimpock said.
The union also has “neutrality agreements” with other dispensaries that allow it to reach out to workers without employer interference. If a majority of workers agree to accept the union at their dispensary, they can be represented by UFCW Local 770 without going through the National Labor Relations Board process, Shimpock said.
“My coworkers and I have joined UFCW Local 770 because we want to protect and preserve good jobs and access to affordable healthcare that responsible medical cannabis dispensaries can provide,” said Alex James Rogers, an employee of the Venice Beach Care Center, in a Wednesday statement.
The UFCW in October 2011 issued a press release urging federal prosecutors to end their crackdown of medical marijuana dispensaries in California.
