Dan Rush
An Oakland labor leader who has advocated for a legalized, unionized cannabis industry in California has been charged in U.S. District Court for accepting bribes or kickbacks to both help and hinder unionization efforts.
Dan Rush — who was fired this week as the executive director of the cannabis division of the United Food and Commercial Workers union — allegedly took a $600,000 loan from a dispensary, among other transgressions. An FBI affidavit alleges that Rush began working off the loan by providing “various labor benefits to the (dispensary operator), including union support for opening dispensaries and reducing or eliminating pressure to unionize dispensary workers.”
The FBI affidavit is chock-full of alleged malfeasance, including this nugget: Rush used a dispensary operator’s credit card to pay phone bills of his Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club associates.
Rush was charged in U.S. District Court in Oakland with honest services fraud and accepting payments in violation of the Taft-Hartley Act.
The UCFW union said Friday:
“To be clear, Mr. Rush has been terminated. The UFCW holds all of its employees to the highest standards, and we expect that they perform their responsibilities with integrity and honor. What Mr. Rush has been accused of is not only shocking to us, it is a betrayal for what we at the UFCW stand for.”
Cannabis Politics, California-Style 