Incoming Walgreens CEO doesn’t mention pharmacy walkouts

Incoming Walgreens CEO Tim Wentworth on Thursday briefly praised the corporate’s pharmacy staff, but made no mention of the three-day protest walkouts they held this week over poor working conditions.

The walkouts reflect rising dissatisfaction amongst pharmacy employees, who’ve complained for years about having to grapple with understaffing and burdensome work expectations imposed by corporate management. The Covid-19 pandemic worsened those issues, with recent duties reminiscent of testing and vaccinations stretching employees even thinner. 

The growing labor pressure is just certainly one of several challenges Wentworth may have to face when he steps into the chief executive role on Oct. 23.

He may also must grapple with a profit squeeze because of falling demand for Covid products and Walgreens’ rocky transition from being a significant drugstore chain to a big health-care company. 

Wentworth, in the course of the company’s earnings call Thursday, shared a story about how an worker at a store in Rochester, Recent York, “professionally and cheerfully” helped deliver a critical medication prescription for his mother. 

“It was the sort of experience I appreciate and everybody deserves,” Wentworth said in his first remarks as incoming CEO since Walgreens announced his appointment on Tuesday. 

He said committed pharmacists and other team members can collectively “improve the lives of everybody who walks through our door in my mom’s hometown Walgreens in Rochester, and in every store we operate.” 

The experiences he has had with employees made his decision to hitch Walgreens “frankly, a simple one,” Wentworth added.

His remarks partly echoed an announcement the corporate issued earlier this week in response to the walkouts. 

A Walgreens spokesperson touted the corporate’s pharmacy teams within the statement, noting that they work “tirelessly to serve our communities.”

However the spokesperson also acknowledged that the “previous few years have required an unprecedented effort from our team members.” 

Walgreens is engaged and listening to the concerns of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, the spokesperson said.

Nevertheless it’s unclear whether management has made any changes in response to any of those employees’ demands, which include more staff, payroll transparency, advance notice of staff and schedule changes and mandatory training for brand new hires, amongst other items. 

Along with filling and verifying prescriptions, pharmacy employees often must juggle patient phone calls, administer a growing variety of vaccines this fall, work with insurance firms on issues reminiscent of copays and reimbursements, perform rapid Covid and flu testing and take care of indignant customers who’re seeing longer wait times because of understaffing.