Table of Contents
- What the Law Actually Requires
- Why Cannabis Operators Get This Wrong
- Your Job Postings: What Needs to Change
- The Internal Consistency Problem
- New York City Has Its Own Layer
- Record-Keeping and Enforcement
- How to Get Compliant Without Losing Your Mind
- FAQ
New York’s pay transparency law has been in effect since September 2023, and most cannabis operators I’ve talked to fall into one of two camps: they either don’t know the details or they think they’re covered because they added a salary range to their Indeed listing. Neither is a safe place to be.
The cannabis industry in New York is still young and still figuring itself out. Between licensing headaches, regulatory pressure, and the chaos of building a workforce from scratch, HR compliance gets pushed to the back burner. But pay transparency is one area where operators are genuinely exposed, and the fix is not complicated. You just need to know what the law actually requires and where the gaps tend to show up.
What the Law Actually Requires
New York Labor Law Section 194-B applies to any private employer with four or more employees. If you run a dispensary, cultivation facility, or cannabis production operation with at least four people on payroll, this law applies to you.
Here is what it requires, specifically:
- Every job posting, whether for a new hire, a promotion, or an internal transfer, must include a salary range.
- The range must reflect the minimum and maximum compensation the employer genuinely expects to pay for that role at the time of posting. It cannot be a placeholder.
- If a written job description already exists for the role, it must be included in the posting.
- If the role is commission-based, that must be clearly stated.
- The law also covers remote roles, as long as the position reports to a supervisor, office, or worksite located in New York State.
One thing worth flagging: this is not the same as the New York City law, which predates it and has some stricter requirements. We will get to that below.
Why Cannabis Operators Get This Wrong
There are a few patterns I see repeatedly when cannabis businesses run into trouble with pay transparency.
The first is posting a range that is technically there but completely meaningless. Something like “$1,500 to $80,000 annually” for a budtender role tells a candidate nothing and signals to any compliance reviewer that no real thought went into it. The law requires a good-faith range, which means a range that actually reflects what you expect to pay. A range so wide it is functionally useless is not good-faith compliance.
The second issue is inconsistency between the posted range and what you are actually offering candidates. If your job posting says $45,000 to $55,000 and you are consistently making offers below $45,000, you’re going to have regulatory and reputational problems. Candidates talk, especially in an industry as community-oriented as cannabis.
The third, and most common, issue is the internal side of the law. Most operators focus entirely on external job postings and miss the fact that the requirement applies to promotions and transfers as well. If you post an internal opening for a shift lead or a store manager position, it needs to meet the same standards as any public posting.
Your Job Postings: What Needs to Change
Let’s make this concrete. Here is what a compliant external job posting for a New York cannabis business needs to include.
The salary range. It needs to be a real range. Pull your actual compensation data. If you are hiring a budtender and the role pays between $18 and $22 an hour, depending on experience, list that. If everyone hired into that role makes exactly $19 per hour, list a fixed rate. The law permits either; it just prohibits the omission.
A job description, if one exists. This is where many operators trip up. They have a rough description somewhere in a folder no one has opened in two years, or they built one for a previous hire and never formalized it. The law says if a description exists, it must be included. The simplest way to handle this is to make sure every active role has a current, formal job description before you post.
A commission disclosure, if applicable. This matters more in sales-adjacent roles, but if any part of the compensation is commission-based, that also has to be stated clearly in the posting.
Remote roles. If someone is going to work remotely but reports to your New York-based business, that role is covered. Do not assume remote postings are exempt just because the person will not be in the state.
The Internal Consistency Problem
This is the part of pay transparency compliance that gets almost no attention, and it is where I think cannabis operators face their biggest long-term risk.
Here is the scenario. You post a dispensary manager role at $55,000 to $65,000. You hire someone at $58,000. Two years later, a long-tenured employee who started at $45,000 is still making $50,000, even though they are doing the same or more work than the new hire. They see the job posting. They ask questions. This is where things get uncomfortable.
New York’s pay equity provisions under Section 194 require that employees performing substantially similar work under similar conditions receive comparable pay. Job titles do not matter as much as actual duties. If two people are doing the same job at your dispensary and one is making meaningfully less, that disparity is difficult to defend, especially if protected characteristics like gender or race are involved.
This does not mean everyone at every level must be paid the same wage. Experience, performance, and tenure can all justify differences. But you need to be able to explain those differences with actual documentation, and that requires having clear compensation bands for your roles before a question gets asked.
The practical fix is to map your current employees to defined pay ranges for their roles and identify any outliers before a job posting forces the conversation. That exercise is uncomfortable, but it is far less uncomfortable than addressing it after a complaint.
New York City Has Its Own Layer
If any of your operations are in New York City, you are operating under both the state law and the NYC Wage Transparency Law, which has been in effect since November 2022.
The NYC law is enforced by the NYC Commission on Human Rights rather than the state Department of Labor. Under the city law, a violation is treated as an unlawful discriminatory practice, which creates a different enforcement path than the state law. Unlike the state, the NYC law originally gave employers a 30-day window to correct a violation before penalties kicked in. The state law has no such grace period.
If you are operating in New York City, verify your postings meet both standards. When they conflict, the stricter requirement applies.
Record-Keeping and Enforcement
The state law originally required employers to keep records of posted salary ranges for at least six years. A recent amendment modified some of those provisions, but documentation is still important. You should be maintaining records of your compensation decisions, including how you set ranges for specific roles and any supporting market data you used.
Penalties under the New York State law are graduated: up to $1,000 for a first violation, $2,000 for a second, and $3,000 for each subsequent violation. Enforcement is handled solely by the New York State Department of Labor, and there is currently no private right of action under the state law, meaning a job applicant cannot sue you directly. However, any applicant or employee can file a complaint with the NYDOL, which can trigger an investigation.
The state law also prohibits retaliation. If an employee or applicant asks about pay ranges or raises a concern about a noncompliant posting, you cannot demote, reduce hours, or otherwise penalize them for doing so.
How to Get Compliant Without Losing Your Mind
This is not a month-long project. Here is a practical sequence you can work through.
Step one: Audit your active job postings. Go through every current job listing, whether it’s on your website, Indeed, LinkedIn, or an internal board. Confirm each one has a real salary range, a job description, and a commission disclosure if applicable.
Step two: Build or update job descriptions for every active role. This is the part most cannabis operators skip, and it creates the most downstream problems. You need a documented description for each position before you post it, both to comply with the law and to protect yourself in the event of a compensation or accommodation dispute.
Step three: Map your current compensation to defined bands. For each role in your operation, establish a minimum and maximum pay range you are willing to offer. Compare what your current employees earn against those bands. Flag anyone who sits outside them and document why.
Step four: Train anyone who posts jobs or conducts hiring. Your store manager should not be posting job listings with no pay range, or worse, posting ranges they made up on the spot. Anyone involved in hiring needs to understand what the law requires and why the good-faith standard matters.
Step five: Update your employee handbook. Your policies should reflect your pay practices and your non-retaliation stance on compensation discussions, and they should always be documented in your employee handbook. This is both a legal safeguard and a trust signal for your team.
If you are not sure where to start, a state-specific hiring kit that includes benchmarked salary data for typical cannabis roles and positions can make steps two and three much faster. You shouldn’t have to guess what a budtender or a general manager earns in New York. That data exists.
KushHR’s New York Cannabis Hiring Kit includes a basic overview of applicable state employment laws, role-specific job descriptions, and benchmarked salary ranges for common dispensary positions. If you want to extend that to cultivation or production roles, there is an add-on for that as well. It is not a substitute for legal counsel on complex situations, but it gives you a documented starting point that is grounded in the actual market.
FAQ
Does New York’s pay transparency law apply to cannabis businesses specifically?
The law applies to all private employers with four or more employees in New York State. There is no cannabis-specific exemption. If your dispensary, cultivation operation, or cannabis production facility employs four or more people and operates in New York, the law applies to you.
What counts as a “good-faith” salary range under New York law?
A good-faith range reflects what you genuinely expect to pay for a role at the time of posting. A range so broad it provides no meaningful information, such as $15,000 to $150,000 for a single front-line position, isn’t going to meet the standard. Generally, none of your employees should be earning more than the top end of your pay band for their role, just as no employee should be earning less than the bottom of the band, or the pay floor for that role. If you find outliers, it is likely time to promote the employee to a higher-paid role or revisit your current pay bands.
Do I need to include pay ranges for internal job postings and promotions?
Yes. The law applies to job, promotion, and transfer opportunities, not just external new-hire postings. If you are posting an internal opening for a shift lead position, it needs to include a salary range and a job description, just like an external listing.
What happens if my current employees are paid below the range I post publicly?
That situation creates both legal and operational risk. If existing employees see a posted range that is higher than what they currently earn for the same or similar work, they have grounds to ask questions, and in some cases, to file a pay equity complaint. It is better to do a compensation audit before a job posting forces the issue. You need to increase their pay to be in line with what you are offering new hires, at the very least.
Can an employee sue me directly for a pay transparency violation in New York?
Under the New York State law, there is currently no private right of action, meaning an employee or applicant can’t sue you directly. Enforcement runs through the New York State Department of Labor via a complaint process. Note that the New York City law operates differently and may allow for lawsuits.
Does the law apply to remote employees?
Yes, if the remote role reports to a supervisor, office, or worksite located in New York State, the law applies, even if the employee works from another state.
