Thousands of Walgreens pharmacy staff across the country are walking off work this week, alleging that poor working conditions are putting employees and patients at risk.
The walkout could impact hundreds of stores starting Monday and going through Wednesday, an organizer of the effort told The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the company. It is unclear whether any pharmacies have stopped operations.
Pharmacists, technicians and support staff claim that increased demands on understaffed teams — such as administering vaccines while battling hundreds of backlogged prescriptions — have become untenable and are impeding their ability to do their jobs responsibly.
“When you’re a pharmacist, a missed letter or a number that’s wrong in a prescription could kill somebody,” the organizer said.
In a statement to The Post, Walgreens spokesman Fraser Engerman said the company recognizes that the last few years have been “unprecedented” and “a very challenging time.”
“We also understand the immense pressures felt across the U.S. in retail pharmacy right now,” Engerman said. “We are engaged and listening to the concerns raised by some of our team members. We are committed to ensuring that our entire pharmacy team has the support and resources necessary to continue to provide the best care to our patients while taking care of their own well-being.”
“We are making significant investments in pharmacist wages and hiring bonuses to attract/retain talent in harder to staff locations,” he added, but did not provide further details. Staffing crunch
Employees are requesting that the company hire more pharmacy staff, establish mandatory training hours, offer transparency in how payroll hours are assigned to stores, and give advance notice when staff will be cut or when a position opens.
The collective actions, first reported by CNN, was inspired by a walkout of pharmacy employees at CVS locations in Kansas City a few weeks ago, the organizer said. Walgreens employees, like CVS, are not unionized, so the efforts came together on a subreddit for pharmacy staff.
Workers at both retailers share similar experiences, said Michael Hogue, chief executive of American Pharmacists Association, a membership organization representing industry professionals: Both are struggling to hire pharmacists and technicians because they don’t want to work in a high-stress environment with little support.
“We have a problem across the entire U.S. with inadequate staffing in community pharmacies,” he said.
Employees who spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by the company said they are often the only pharmacist on staff for a 12-hour shift.
“There have been days where I worked alone or with [one] technician when there [are] over 300 prescriptions to fill,” an employee said. “That is not humanly possible along with your day-to-day tasks. As a pharmacist, that is verification, patient calls, vaccines, transfers, calling doctors, doing [medication management].”
The added pressure of administering vaccines has made it almost impossible to do their jobs responsibly, the organizer said. In one instance, a regional leader visiting the organizer’s store, as he was juggling thousands of prescription backlogs, told him to stop what he was doing and focus on vaccination appointments because “they give us better gross profit.”
There has also been an uptick in violence from customers frustrated over delays in filling their prescriptions or vaccine shortages, Hogue said.
“We’re having stories of patients coming in and screaming at the pharmacist and pharmacy technicians, violence … death threats,” he said. “It’s been really, really nasty and consumers are not patient.”
The decision to walk off the job is not one that pharmacists take lightly, but for many the action is unavoidable, Hogue said.
In a stressful or unsafe environment, pharmacists are trained to “stop, evaluate the situation, determine the circumstances around them and then take appropriate action to correct those circumstances so that they can proceed in a fully safe environment,” he explained. “So some pharmacies and some locations have determined that they cannot proceed safely without additional staff.”
I went to Walgreens for my first and second round of covid vaccines. Each visit was an absolute shit show. First shot I had to wait a half hour for someone to give it to me. The line of customers in store and at the drive thru was constant, and there were only two people working. Second shot, same situation, and I waited an hour and a half. When the pharmacist finally called me in and saw what time my appointment was for, she said "well I wouldn't have waited." Motherfuck, you think I'm trying to die of covid?
Since then I've gotten my boosters at CVS. It's directly across the street and it's where I have all my prescriptions. The least amount of people I've seen working in the pharmacy is four. Usually it's six. There may be a car or two ahead if I try to use the drive thru, if so, I'll just walk in because there is almost never a line inside.
I 100% support these workers walking out. Fuck Walgreens. That place has always been nasty and run down, even the new ones.
I completely understand hating Walgreens, but I would like to point out that CVS is worse in nearly every way possible. If you have a choice, a local pharmacy would be a better option if you're looking for somewhere with ethics and a fast turn around.
CVS owns their own prescription coverage company, CVS CareMark, and their own health insurance company, Aetna. If you are unfortunate enough to be given this coverage by your employer, they will deny everything all the time. They will require you get your prescriptions through CVS. If CVS does not carry the medication you need, they will simply refuse to pay for it. For example, medication my daughter needed for her kidneys to function properly, CVS only carried adult doses and not pediatric ones. I spent two years arguing with them and got about 6 months of it paid for in the end. In the meantime, I just spent thousands out of pocket because my daughter needs kidneys.
Granted, that's anecdotal. But feel free to just Google CareMark or Aetna and see the numerous lawsuits for gouging and mismanagement, the complaints over inability to get them to cover things that should be covered, the BBB complaints about wrong prescriptions and wrong amounts.
CVS is my personal devil. I hate them more than any other company in the world. I hate them in a preoccupied, obsessive kind of way. Please go local if possible.
Not to discount or diminish your experience but I’ve had the polar opposite with Aetna/CVS.
Due to unfortunate circumstances my family has had nearly 300 claims via Aetna over the past 24 months with only one hitch that required any legwork on my side. We pick up all our ad hoc prescriptions at the local Walgreens and all of our maintenance meds shipped via an independent provider. Only one script has ever been mandated to go through Caremark and it’s was a specialty drug that ran about $1000 US per daily dose.