CVS and Walgreens employees stage walkout amid unsafe conditions, staffing issues, and being overworked!

As soon as I heard the news from someone I immediately knew I had to cover this beautiful story. So the headline is Walgreens workers recently staged a walkout at hundreds of locations due to the unsafe working conditions, understaffing, and insane metrics.

“We want patients before profits,” said the walkout organizer, who has worked for Walgreens for more than a decade. “The company has cut hours drastically while continuing to pile more work and new programs on top of us. Customers are not being taken care of. Our patients are not being cared for. It is not safe.”

This doesn’t surprise me in the least. Walgreens is notorious for cutting hours and increasing metrics to a dangerous level which affects people’s physical health, mental, and emotional well being. That is not okay and I’m so happy these workers are taking a stand. It makes me wish I had taken more of a stand when I worked for them, at least particularly when it came to unionizing. I brought it up with my Walgreens colleagues in 2022 but I sadly had to quit due to someone saying something personal but that’s neither here nor there.

In addition to filling and verifying prescriptions, Walgreens pharmacists also must manage a large volume of patient calls; perform rapid flu and COVID-19 testing; work with insurance companies on such issues as approvals, co-pays and reimbursements; and provide an increasing number of vaccinations, including COVID-19, flu, pneumonia and shingles.

Again this is sadly so typical of big retail pharmacies and honestly just retailers in general. They cut hours, and increase metric requirements, which in turn causes turnover and then the remaining employees get saddled with more and more work and responsibilities, when they already have enough shit to do.

I’m glad workers are finally standing up for themselves and essentially saying “Fuck you” to the corporations responsible for this walkout. What goes around comes around. CVS, Walgreens trust me you have not seen anything yet. There will almost certainly be a ripple effect from this I’m sure of it. Corporate better brace themselves because this is only the beginning. People are finally fed up and taking action.

“The workload is so heavy and the amount of staff they allot us is so low that I’m unable to go to the bathroom during my 10-hour shift,” she said. “I can’t physically walk away from the line of people or the backlog of prescriptions. I’m expected to fill all these prescriptions by myself and counsel all these patients by myself and do all the vaccines by myself so that I’m unable to go to the bathroom and I’m unable to keep my patients safe.”

This is exactly one of the reasons I felt personally upset by a family member of mine who works at CVS. She works like 9-10 hour shifts and she seriously overworks herself. I seriously feel like she’s going to burn herself out one of these days, but she seems to be doing well. That’s all I can ask for.

“We have communicated to corporate, and there has been zero response,” said another CVS pharmacist participating in the walkout. “They have not talked to us yet.”

Again this does not surprise me. I’ve had both the pleasure and displeasure speaking to employees up at corporate. Everywhere from payroll, to payroll admin, to colleague relations/advice and counsel now. Most of them are either ignorant of the laws particularly in Rhode Island, or there’s some who just simply just know the law and only act like part of it applies to them.

So overall, good on the workers for standing up for what they believe is right! Alone we beg, collectively we bargain. Keep up the amazing work guys! I’m rooting for you.