Why are Walgreens employees planning a walkout on Monday October 9?

During flu season, pharmacies like those found in stores like CVS, Walgreens, and Target form part of critical infrastructure to vaccinate the population while also continuing to carry out their other functions. However, as more responsibilities have been handed down to workers in these pharmacies, particularly vaccinations during the pandemic, many feel that their teams have been stretched too thin and that they are no longer able to provide quality care to their patients and store patrons.

Many pharmacists, technicians, and other pharmacy staff at Walgreens have been pushed to their limit and plan to participate in walkouts early next week. Between Monday and Wednesday, thousands of workers could participate, but with workers not belonging to a union that can authorize a legal strike, the fear of retaliation could limit the number of people who choose to leave their posts.

Walgreens workers are following the lead of CVS employees

Workers at Walgreens are not alone. The actions planned at Walgreens come after workers at CVS had staged walkouts across Missouri, which prompted the company to announce that they would be taking the concerns voiced by protesting workers seriously.

In one Missouri CVS, a pharmacist said that 125 vaccine appointments had been made in a single day, of which they were the only person scheduled able to administer the shots and were still expected to keep up with their other responsibilities. In a statement issued by CVS’ Chief Pharmacy Officer Prem Shah obtained by USA Today, the executive stated that in response to the protests, “a series of actions effective immediately.” These actions included “adjusting appointment availability” for vaccines and streamlining the hiring process to fill vacant roles in the chain’s pharmacies more quickly.

Organizers have kept quiet while planning

The plans for a walkout were confirmed by an anonymous source to CNN, highlighting the dangerous position workers who take action against the company feel they are in. The source who spoke with CNN explained they have tried to get the company’s attention to explain the difficult situations they find themselves in, but they have been met with silence and stalling.

Walgreens’ anti-union attitude may be catching up to them

Walgreens has been vocal in its opposition to workplace organizing.

In 2013, the company published a list of ten reasons workers should say no in a union vote.

Number 6: “Unions don’t add value or increase the bottom line of a company. In fact, many times unions add to the cost of operating a facility.”

Like many items on the list, this statement is misleading and overtly casts the perspective and interests of an executive onto that of a worker. “The bottom line” of any company are its profits. Profits are what is left over once a company establishes how much it has taken in as revenue and how much it pays to cover its operating costs.

If Walgreens workers were unionized and as a part of their contract negotiations, demanded that the company hire additional pharmacy workers, the company’s profits could fall as their labor costs increase. However, that is not necessarily always going to be the case; with more workers, the pharmacy may actually be able to fill more prescriptions, offer more vaccines, and provide customers with better care overall. Additionally, the argument that unions could hurt the company financially raises the question of whether workers should endure stressful, dangerous, and overwhelming conditions to protect the profits that their labor helps to generate.

Another situation that can lower profits for a company is when the service offered is not up to the customer’s standards. If every time a customer visits a Walgreens or CVS pharmacy, they are met with tired workers and a long line, they may opt to take their business elsewhere, which also costs the company money. CVS and Walgreens fill forty percent of all prescriptions in the US, and if occupying such a large portion of the market requires that the needs of workers be sacrificed, it is purposefully obtuse of the companies to expect there would never be a response from their labor force.