Walgreens pharmacy staffers stage walkouts over work conditions

Walgreens has named a new CEO as pharmacy staff walked off the job this week over concerns that working conditions are putting employees and patients at risk.

Tim Wentworth, who formerly headed Express Scripts, a pharmacy benefit manager, was named CEO as of Oct. 23.

Walgreens Boots Alliance’s former CEO, Rosalind Brewer, stepped down in late August as the company was struggling with drug and staffing shortages.

Health care is suffering from wider worker dissatisfaction and staffing shortages that are not isolated to drugstores, as the recent Kaiser Permanente strike shows.

The exact scale of the pharmacists’ protest was unclear.

Organizers on Tuesday estimated that more than 300 Walgreens locations — out of nearly 9,000 nationwide — were affected by walkouts planned for Monday through Wednesday.

A company spokesperson said “no more than a dozen” pharmacies experienced disruptions.

A Walgreens pharmacy manager who helped organize the walkouts told The Associated Press that teams were short-staffed and overworked, especially with the additional demands from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s led to upset customers,” said the organizer, who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity for fear of being punished by the company.

“It’s led to medication errors, vaccination errors, needle sticks.”

Many Walgreens workers aren’t unionized and the employees who walked out are organizing online.

They shared three main requests for the company, the organizer said: to improve transparency about shifting hours and schedules; to set aside training hours for new team members; and to adjust tasks and expectations at each location based on staffing levels.

The organizer said if Walgreens does not address concerns from pharmacy staff, more walkouts could happen at the end of the month.