COMING OUT OF THE CANNABIS SHADOWS

Hi everyone! I'm a 25 years career Human Resources professional who has been asked to bring a fast growing cannabis packaging/shipping business's workforce into compliance. Almost 40 peeps altogether, about 15 in admin and management and the rest in the warehouse rolling/packaging/shipping.

As you might have guessed, most of the warehouse staff does not have a SSN/TIN but we want to retain as many of them as possible (they've been loyal for years) as we scale up and bring all aspects of the company into compliance. All permits, banking, insurance, OSHA, etc is above board but this last sticky-wicket collision of immigration/employment/cannabis law is definitely a heavy lift.

How has anyone else handled this transition from undocumented workers to legitimate workforce before? The suggestions I've researched have included:

• 1099ing everyone (not a good choice as Oregon looks for 1099 abuse in the industry specifically for this reason),
• Have someone on the crew create an LLC of those workers and we 'hire' the LLC. Obviously finding an agent who's willing to take on that responsibility is tough, especially if its someone on the crew.
• PEO (Professional Employment Agency}: Essentially a temp agency who handles all your crew stuff for you; wages, attrition, discipline, benefits, etc. However at a 35%-50% uprate on top of wages... thats way too expensive and more than likely they couldn't bring any of our workers on w/o a SSN.
• Payroll cards: Cards issued from our bank to each person that we deposit $ onto, but I think a bank needs to verify these are "employees" before they can issue a card.
• Green card sponsoring?

I KNOW this is a common issue and many roadblocks have been built to curb this exact thing in efforts to mitigate worker exploitation. We actually treat our staff as family and they have been with us for a few years so we would like to retain them in any way possible, thats mostly legal. That being said, has anyone utilized a creative solution for this despite all the legal hurdles? And please dont simply say "get with an attorney". Thats an obvious one and we will do that at the right time, I'm just exploring all the options and nuances to this problem first. Thanks!