More than a dozen Walgreens pharmacists and supporters gathered outside stores in the area in late April and early May to draw attention to what they said is inadequate pay and working conditions.
At the Walgreens in Forest Park at 7200 Roosevelt Road May 3, they stood in front of a large inflatable rat as a truck with a video screen on its side displayed “We <3 Walgreens Pharmacy Staff!” while it drove around the block.
The action came as a part of the Phed Up Pharmacists Tour, where Walgreens pharmacists who had the day off visited 46 Chicagoland Walgreens. They aimed to raise awareness for inadequate pay and working conditions for the company’s pharmacists, who have been working without a contract for the last nine months, according to the National Pharmacists Association-Laborers’ International Union of North America (NPhA-LIUNA), which represents nearly 900 pharmacists at 400 Chicagoland Walgreens locations.
Chicagoland Walgreens pharmacists aren’t on strike and are in the process of negotiating their union contract with Walgreens, asking for a pay raise, job security and checks on telepharmacy.
“We’re hoping that this will help to move the needle, showing some of the discontent and getting the word out to the public about what’s going on,” said Robert Kobleski, a pharmacist at a Walgreens on the Northwest side of Chicago and secretary of NPhA-LIUNA’s executive board.
Walgreens pharmacists have received a 2% pay raise in the last seven years, NPhA-LIUNA officials said in a statement, which doesn’t adequately acknowledge pharmacists for their work. Officials added that, last year, 74% of Walgreens sales occurred at pharmacies, while only 26% was from retail.
Representatives from Walgreens did not respond to requests for comment.
“We have a really dedicated group of pharmacists who really care about their patients and who are willing to stick around at a job, though they have basically been losing money for the past seven years,” said Kobleski, who has worked for Walgreens for nearly 25 years and participated in the Phed Up Pharmacists tour.
Walgreens has tried meeting with NPhA-LIUNA, but the union has not accepted an invitation since last fall, officials said in an email from Walgreens.
“Our leaders are in our pharmacies regularly, listening to concerns and responding to feedback,” Walgreens officials said. “We have taken steps over the last two years to improve pharmacists’ experience, advance the profession and enable them to provide the high value care they were trained to do.”
Pharmacist demands
In addition to a pay raise, union Walgreens pharmacists are also calling for improved scheduling in their contracts. Rather than hire more pharmacy staff, Walgreens has cut pharmacy hours and closed stores, according to the NPhA-LIUNA.
Walgreens announced last summer that it would close 150 locations in the United States. At that time, Walgreens had implemented reduced hours at over 1,000 locations, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Although Kobleski’s store on the Northwest side of Chicago is open 24 hours and one of the busiest in the Chicagoland area, he said that wasn’t the case at the previous Walgreens he worked at. Kobleski lives in Naperville and was a pharmacist at a 24-hour location in the Chicago suburb, along with at a 24-hour Walgreens in Berwyn. But when Walgreens cut both of those locations’ hours, Kobleski started working at his current Chicago location.
“It’s displacing a lot of full-time pharmacists and forcing them to either be part-time or to float from store to store,” Kobleski said. “It’s definitely causing a lot of turmoil amongst the pharmacists and a lot of uncertainty, stress and worry.”
Walgreens pharmacists are also worried about telepharmacy.
Kobleski said Walgreens plans to add telepharmacy services in Illinois stores. This, he said, would change processes so that only technicians operate physical pharmacy locations, while Walgreens pharmacists perform tasks remotely, speaking to a patient through a screen when required. According to the NPhA-LIUNA, telepharmacists aren’t required to be located or licensed in Illinois.
Kobleski said telepharmacy would harm individualized care and relationships with patients.
“I don’t know many pharmacists who went to pharmacy school to just talk to somebody who they don’t even know or have any history with on a screen,” Kobleski said. “I don’t think it’s good for business, and I don’t think it’s good for the patient.”
“Plain and simple, the point of telepharmacy is to increase Walgreens’ profits by cutting the number of pharmacists while increasing the workload of the few remaining,” said Joe Pignataro, NPhA-LIUNA’s president and a full-time Walgreens pharmacist, in a statement. “Recent decisions at other corporations have taught us that outsourcing, de-skilling and ignoring experts — putting profits over people — is not a sustainable business model.”
Despite these qualms, pharmacists like Kobleski and Pignataro have stayed with Walgreens to improve pay and working conditions for their peers.
“We’re proud to be Walgreens pharmacists,” Kobleski said. “We’ve always been highly regarded in the retail industry. We feel like the best pharmacists come out of Walgreens.”
But Kobleski would like Walgreens to listen to their pharmacists’ demands, and have his contract reflect that.
“You have to do something to step up, to maintain the integrity of this company into the future,” Kobleski said of Walgreens. “You need to do something to retain this excellent staff that you’re taking for granted.”
Kobleski said the union’s next contract negotiation with Walgreens will take place June 6.
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