As leadership ignores their demands for change, some Walgreens workers are planning another walkout at the end of October. The target is October 30th to November 1st. Employees want to force corporate entities to look at the working conditions of their employees. Spearheading the movement is Shane Jerominski, an independent pharmacist who used to work for Walgreens.
Having been an employee before, he knows how much of the store’s revenue is generated at Halloween, especially in rural stores where their big and cheap bags of candy fly off shelves almost as fast as their prescriptions do. Add in this marking the unofficial kickoff of cold and flu season, this is also when the most people come in for vaccines and over-the-counter meds.
The heart of their problem is largely based on staffing. Understaffed at locations across the nation, they are seeing their job descriptions rapidly expanding and their pay remaining criminally low. With some managers and assistant managers staying in the same position for years (and in some cases decades), they aren’t receiving adequate raises to coincide with their dedication to the job. As shares have plunged from $41 a share in November 2022 to $21 on October 19th, the company has pledged to shed $1 billion from its budget in the next year.
Cuts like this aren’t coming in shaving down their offerings of last-minute birthday gifts, or closing down their convenience store selection of foods and drinks. Instead, it will come from the same place it always comes from, the employees. The company claims a lot has changed since the pandemic, and they are trying to help their employees.
In a statement, they claimed big changes were coming to staffing, positions, pay, hiring bonuses, and better schedules, “And we’re empowering store and district leaders to pause routine activities during this busy immunization season to focus on the clinical care and services our patients require.” Apparently, this “good workers cookie” will make the rest of their toxic work culture go down smoothly.
