Pharmacy employees at Walgreens stores across the United States staged walkouts earlier this week over harsh working conditions that they say make it difficult to safely fill prescriptions, CNN reported.
The walkouts came just two weeks after dozens of CVS pharmacists protested unsafe working conditions by walking off the job in Kansas City.
An estimated several hundred pharmacists and pharmacy technicians participated in the protest, a spokesperson told CNN. The coordinated action at some Walgreens stores is in response to what pharmacy employees call burdensome prescription and vaccination expectations levied on pharmacists from corporate management, according to the organizer. As a result, employees often find themselves falling behind and dealing with angry customers.
The company sets performance expectations based on the number of team members each pharmacy should have, a pharmacy employee told CNN. However, in reality, staffing is much lower than that. At the same time, the employee said, they’ve cut training hours for new technicians.
“We don’t believe that Walgreens is allowing us to give our patients safe care on a daily basis,” the organizer explained. “Walgreens isn’t responding, they’re not fixing those things.”
A representative from Walgreens said the company has increased training for new pharmacists but has put a pause on what it called “non-critical” training during the busy immunization season.
Walgreens representatives also told CNN that there have never been corporate quotas and that all task-based metrics for retail pharmacy staff as part of team members’ performance reviews were eliminated last year. The company said it has made $265 million in incremental investments in its nationwide pharmacy team this fiscal year and has created dedicated positions to manage inventory and administrative tasks for pharmacists.
In a statement to CNN, Walgreens acknowledged that pharmacy employees were overworked.
“The last few years have required an unprecedented effort from our team members, and we share their pride in this work — while recognizing it has been a very challenging time,” said Fraser Engerman, a communications director at Walgreens. “We also understand the immense pressures felt across the U.S. in retail pharmacy right now. We are engaged and listening to the concerns raised by some of our team members.”
UAW Goes on Strike at Volvo’s Mack Trucks Unit
Nearly 4,000 members of the United Auto Workers went on strike at Volvo Group’s Mack Trucks unit after rejecting a five-year contract proposal, the Wall Street Journal reports.
UAW-represented workers at Mack plants in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Florida walked off their jobs after 73% voted down a contract offer on Sunday. The tentative agreement reached a week earlier between the union and the company included 19% raises over the life of the contract, starting with a 10% increase in the first year and a $3,500 lump-sum bonus for ratifying the contract.
“I’m inspired to see UAW members at Mack Trucks holding out for a better deal, and ready to stand up and walk off the job to win it,” said UAW President Shawn Fain.
Mack President Stephen Roy said the company was surprised and disappointed that the union went on strike, calling the move unnecessary. “We clearly demonstrated our commitment to good-faith bargaining by arriving at a tentative agreement,” he said.
The UAW’s previous four-year contract with the company expired on Oct. 1. The union said it plans to push for higher pay increases, improved cost-of-living allowances, upgraded job security and better pension benefits.
Gartner Survey Reveals RTO Policies Most Likely to Engender Boardroom Clashes
Nearly three out of four organizations said return-to-office policies could prompt boardroom battles, according to a Gartner survey.
RTO mandates were cited as the issue that had the greatest potential to foment conflict among leaders, the September poll of 170 HR executives found. Those policies came ahead of topics such as layoffs, debates about diversity and ESG, and the adoption of generative AI.
Most HR executives polled said that office attendance policies had increased tension between teams, possibly because just one-third of firms had trained managers to address the many challenges that arise when workers are called back to the office more often.
“Leaders just don’t agree on what the requirements should be,” said Caitlin Duffy, a research director at Gartner’s human-resources practice. “There is so much variation across teams, functions and the nature of what roles require. Managers have been left to figure it out for their teams and that’s hard.”
The findings, coming amid RTO ramp-ups at many firms, illustrate that opinions about the value of in-office work can differ even at the top of the organizational chart.
Hollywood Studious Suspend Talks With Actors
Negotiations between Hollywood studios, streamers and striking actors stalled Wednesday after less than two weeks, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The coalition representing companies like Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Comcast’s NBCUniversal, Amazon and others said a new proposal from the Screen Actors Guild submitted Wednesday “would create an untenable economic burden.” The gap between the two sides is wide, dampening hopes that the industry will soon return to work.
The recent agreement between the studios and Writers Guild of America sparked hope that a new deal with the actors would follow swiftly and end the strike that began in May.
If an accord with the actors isn’t reached by the end of October, it will likely end studios’ chances of salvaging a 2023-24 television season and wreak havoc on movie and TV production and release schedules for the foreseeable future, the Journal noted.
Studios cited a viewership bonus that SAG is seeking as one reason talks broke down. The coalition of studios, streamers and networks said the actors union proposal would cost more than $800 million annually, making it unfeasible.
Fighting over that demand consumed the bulk of the five days of negotiations, the alliance said, with little progress made on other key issues such as the use of artificial intelligence and new royalty rates.
In a letter to members, SAG accused the studio coalition of using “bully tactics” and refusing to share “a tiny portion” of the revenue actors generate for their streaming platforms.
SAG said its request to receive a 2% cut of all streaming revenue would cost companies such as Netflix and Disney less than 57 cents per subscriber annually. SAG said the alliance overstated the cost of that proposal by 60%.
Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-chief executive, called the demand “a bridge too far” deep into negotiations. Speaking at the Bloomberg Screentime conference Thursday, Sarandos said SAG initially wanted a cut of all revenue and revised it to a portion of subscriber revenue.
Studios and streamers are willing to embrace a bonus system for performers involved in shows and movies that deliver strong results, but not a levy on every subscriber’s fee, Sarandos said.
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