It is that polarizing time of year again: the holiday season. While the privileged “1%” are receiving holiday bonuses, many more Americans face the grim realities of being downsized. Still others still are missing out on spending the holiday season with their families as they work in service industries hustling hard to earn extra income to carry them into the new year. Sensitive to these troubling circumstances, California Bay Area Cannabis Company Caliva recently gave early Christmas presents to some hard-working people in the car service industry, in the form of new, full-time jobs with decent benefits.
Car service drivers employed by Über and Lyft in particular, are stretched this during the holiday season. Ferrying tourists, and those who are homeward bound, sometimes means that they are behind the wheel over 14 hours per day. Über drivers' complaints of long hours, low pay and hard work have been in the news repeatedly.
State regulations require Cannabis companies in California to hire drivers as either part-time or full-time employees, which gives these gig economy workers more stable income. They cannot be employed as 1099 contract workers.
Caliva recently recruited approximately 200 workers in the gig economy via Über and DoorDash and hired them as full-time employees, complete with 401k plans and healthcare benefits. The new hires were implemented to fulfill thousands of on-demand Caliva and Eaze delivery orders.
Caliva CEO Dennis O'Malley explained his decision to hire full-time drivers and treat them appropriately.
"While we are required to treat our new hires as employees, the company decided to include ten days of paid vacation time, paid holidays, paid medical, and 401k plans. As a company philosophy, it just makes sense to treat our workers with respect."
Additionally, employees receive discounts on the company's products, which hopefully they do not consume while driving.
The local police department has vetted and “badged’ the drivers assigned to the company's San Jose facility. The badging process includes a background check. The drivers are then issued a unique ID by the department and added to their registry. Employees who leave the company or who are terminated, must relinquish their badge, as per the division of cannabis regulations. Only a certain amount of IDs are allocated. This rigorous process is designed to ensure customer safety.
"The drivers are going to be carrying our brand and our products to our consumers. We thought it was imperative to continue to build on a job that we think is vital to our business," O'Malley says regarding his courier team. "We think the future of cannabis is certainly in providing convenience and we are looking to build up a great driver force in order to offer that."
These latest hires are just a small part of the growth taking place in the Caliva organization. The company’s human resources have nearly doubled since December of 2017, growing from a team of 161 people to a current roster of 335 employees –112 of whom were just recently hired in Q3 of 2018.
The growth will continue well into Q4, with 26 job openings currently posted on Caliva’s website, and an additional 17 delivery drivers are needed in the San Jose, California market.
Caliva is also expanding its physical footprint, breaking ground on a second facility in the Bay Area in November, which will necessitate another hiring cycle. Forty additional non-driver positions are forthcoming and being determined.
Besides poaching drivers from car service companies, Caliva has quietly been recruiting major executives from Silicon Valley tech companies, including the lead scientist from Impossible Burger and a former Supply Chain executive from RackSpace, as well as leadership from GoPro, Datanyze, Westfield Labs, Cisco, and eBay among others.
The company has nearly doubled its workforce in 2018. With approximately 200 hires in the last six months, Caliva is currently spearheading job creation in the California cannabis industry.
