Tim Wentworth, former CEO of Express Scripts.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
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 latest duties comparable to testing and vaccinations stretching employees even thinner.
The growing labor pressure is just one among several challenges Wentworth can have to face when he steps into the chief executive role on Oct. 23.
He can even must grapple with a profit squeeze resulting from falling demand for Covid products and Walgreens’ rocky transition from being a serious drugstore chain to a big health-care company.
Wentworth, throughout 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 everyone 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 straightforward one,” Wentworth added.
His remarks partly echoed a press release 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 couple of 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.
However 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 spanking 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 comparable to copays and reimbursements, perform rapid Covid and flu testing and cope with indignant customers who’re seeing longer wait times resulting from understaffing.