
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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