When I moved to Northern Virginia in 1989, I chose a local CVS store. The pharmacy hours were to remain opened until midnight- convenient for a family with young kids.
About five years later the pharmacy began shutting its windows at 6 pm. So,I switched again to another store.
This one kept its hours for about 4 years, too. But, then, poof- lights out at 6 pm. Ae least now, my kids were older. So, it wasn’t as critical.`
I stayed with that pharmacy. Over the tears, they began shutting don at 1230 for an hour. They also were falling behind on their inventory, forcing me to return 3 or 4 times to retrieve my drugs.
As became true for many CVS and Walgreens stores. In the name of the holy dollar, they’ve cut back staff, overburdening the remaining staff. So now,2000 pharmacists will be walking off the job.
These pharmacists and technicians are protesting without the backing of their unions to protect their jobs, which paints a picture of the gravity of the matter.
Organized labor, such as the United Food & Commercial Workers union, which represents some employees at CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid have taken notice. Even though caught by surprise, they were impressed bt he job action.
Let’s see how the union handles this…
I hope the push by organizers of the walkout to unionize meet with success. I’ve seen CVS close stores (including the one I used to frequent and another one in the downtown where I worked until Covid) and cut hours. My husband got prescriptions at Walgreens for a year under his Part D plan and was even seeing deteriorations in service and hours back then (three years ago). You could already see how stressed the pharmacist staff looked. So dangerous to treat employees like humans and not profit centers.
I plan to follow this and report further, Alana.