A CVS Omnicare Pharmacy in Las Vegas is open first location to affix a brand new national pharmacy union, a milestone for organizers searching for to assist 1000’s of U.S. pharmacy employees take care of what they call unsafe working conditions.
Nearly 30 pharmacy employees on the Las Vegas branch of CVS's Omnicare won their union election with a landslide advantage of 87% to 13%, in keeping with a guild news release Thursday. Its pharmacists and pharmacy technicians write prescriptions for elderly and other vulnerable patients in long-term care facilities throughout Nevada.
These employees at the moment are joining the Pharmacy Guildthat can represent her in employment negotiations with CVS.
“We will try to get a best-in-class contract for these people who trust our union to represent them. “It’s a historic victory and a very decisive one,” Shane Jerominski, a community pharmacist and co-founder of the Pharmacy Guild, told CNBC.
Jerominski and other organizers of a recent nationwide pharmacy employee strike teamed up with IAM Healthcare — a union representing 1000’s of health care employees — to form the Pharmacy Guild in November. The late October walkout, which organizers called “Pharmageddon,” affected major drugstore chains resembling CVS, Walgreens And Rite aidwhich pulls widespread media attention to the scope of employees' concerns.
Like the strike effort, the Pharmacy Guild goals to assist pharmacy staff take care of what many employees describe as unsafe staffing and increasing workloads across the industry, putting each employees and patients in danger. The guild can be calling for legislative and regulatory changes to determine higher standards of practice in pharmacies to guard patients.
The unionization effort is the culmination of years of growing discontent amongst retail pharmacy employees, who often struggle with understaffed teams and rising work expectations from management. The Covid pandemic has only exacerbated these problems, with latest duties resembling testing and vaccinations placing much more strain on pharmacists and technicians.
In an announcement, a CVS Health spokesperson said the corporate respects the rights of its employees to prepare or refrain from unionizing, including Omnicare Las Vegas employees' decision to hunt union representation. The company added that it is going to work “closely and collaboratively” with its employees to deal with their current and future concerns and is “committed to creating a positive and rewarding work environment.”
Omnicare, which was acquired by CVS in 2015, isn’t a public pharmacy like many of the chain's nearly 10,000 stores. According to CVS's website, Omnicare pharmacies are positioned in 49 states.
But Omnicare and other pharmacies face the identical problems, starting from staffing shortages to low starting salaries for technicians, Jerominski said.
“It's not specific to Omnicare, the issues they expressed were the same issues I hear across the country. It’s ubiquitous in all the major chains,” Jerominski said. “You can only ask an organization for support for a certain time frame. … That's why the work stoppages happened. They finally said, 'No, we're going to get the assistance we're asking for.'”
The Pharmacy Guild will now work to reach a union contract with CVS to address the concerns of Omnicare employees in Las Vegas. Jerominski said these employees want consistent work schedules that guarantee pharmacy technicians 40 hours a week year-round.
“You can't keep individuals with special skills and a family, especially given the extent of stress that comes with that job, in case you don't even guarantee them just their 40 hours,” Jerominski told CNBC.
The Pharmacy Guild can be experiencing increasing momentum in other parts of the country. According to Jerominski, pharmacy employees at two retail stores in Rhode Island have officially confirmed that they’ve applied for union membership with the guild.
CVS's headquarters are within the state.
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