The CVS Pharmacy logo is seen on a sign above a CVS Health Corp. store on February 7, 2024. in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images
Pharmacy staff at two CVS Retail stores in Rhode Island voted Friday to join a new national pharmacy union, signaling growing momentum in a movement to help thousands of U.S. pharmacy workers address what they say are unsafe working conditions.
Pharmacy employees at 24-hour locations in Wakefield and Westerly won their union elections, becoming the first stores to unionize in CVS’s home state, according to a statement from the union. This comes a month after a CVS Omnicare pharmacy in Las Vegas — which is not customer-facing — became the first location to join the union, known as The Pharmacy Guild.
The working group will represent them in negotiations with CVS.
“These are the first brick-and-mortar stores in the classic CVS model” to join the union, Shane Jerominski, a community pharmacist and co-founder of The Pharmacy Guild, told CNBC. “This is truly my heart…this is what we all worked for.” Walgreens or CVS in traditional retail, so we all know the working conditions there.
The two locations include nine of the company’s approximately 30,000 pharmacists in the U.S., a CVS spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC. About 700 CVS pharmacists are already unionized with other groups, they noted.
The spokesman said the company respects the rights of its employees to organize or refrain from unionizing. They added that the vote was the first of several steps in the collective bargaining process.
If the National Labor Relations Board confirms the results, “we will negotiate in good faith with the union to reach an agreement,” the CVS spokesman added.
They said the company strives to ensure its pharmacies have “adequate staffing and resources” using “a combination of staffing, hours, workflow and technology.”
Jerominski and other organizers of a nationwide pharmacy worker strike in the fall joined with IAM Healthcare, a union representing thousands of health care workers, to form The Pharmacy Guild in November. This work stoppage affected major drugstore chains such as CVS, Walgreens and Rite aidand drew media attention to workers’ concerns.
The Pharmacy Guild’s mission is to help pharmacy staff deal with what many workers describe as unsafe staffing and increasing workloads across the industry, putting both employees and patients at risk. The union is also calling for legislative and regulatory changes to establish higher standards of practice in pharmacies to protect patients.
The unionization effort reflects years of growing discontent among retail pharmacy workers, who say they often struggle with understaffed teams and rising work expectations from management. Many employees said the Covid-19 pandemic has only exacerbated these problems, with new tasks such as vaccinations and testing placing even greater strain on pharmacy staff.
The Pharmacy Guild is seeing increasing momentum in other parts of the country, Jerominski said. He added that there may be more union filings for non-CVS stores in the next few weeks.
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2024-05-24 18:40:36
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