A new CEO has been appointed by Walgreens following this week's pharmacy staff walkout due to concerns about unsafe working conditions for both staff and customers.

As of October 23, Tim Wentworth, who recently served as CEO of pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts, was named CEO. Rosalind Brewer, the former CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance, resigned from her position in late August as the company struggled with a staffing and prescription shortfall.

The recent Kaiser Permanente strike demonstrates that there is widespread worker unhappiness and staffing difficulties in health care that are not unique to pharmacies.

Uncertainty surrounded the precise scope of the pharmacists' protest. 

On Tuesday, organizers projected that walkouts scheduled for Monday through Wednesday would affect more than 300 of the approximately 9,000 Walgreens outlets nationally, as reported by The Associated Press. According to a corporate spokeswoman, problems occurred at "no more than a dozen" pharmacies.

Teams were understaffed and overworked, especially with the added demands from the COVID-19 outbreak, according to a Walgreens pharmacy manager who assisted with organizing the walkouts, told The Associated Press.

The Staff's Requests

The staff who walked out are organizing online; many Walgreens employees aren't unionized. According to the organizer, they made three key requests of the business: to increase transparency regarding shift times and schedules; to reserve time for new team members to get training; and to modify tasks and expectations at each site based on staffing numbers.

The organizer warned that more walkouts would occur at the end of the month if Walgreens did not address concerns from pharmacy staff.

According to Fraser Engerman, a spokesman for Walgreens, the firm is taking the employees' complaints seriously.

As the busy fall season approaches, drugstores around the nation are faced with a challenging burden. 

Read also: Kaiser Permanente Protesters Threaten More Demonstrations if Demands Not Met

Several Pharmacy Staff Walkouts

Last month, there were walkouts at CVS sites in the Kansas City area as well. As a result, the firm pledged to increase recruiting.

According to Bled Tanoe, a former pharmacist who has been supporting the walkouts on social media, many of these underlying worries about working conditions have been accumulating for years. However, the COVID-19 pandemic made the situation worse by introducing additional requirements, like as testing and immunization, without providing "the proper support for the people behind the counter," she claimed.

Brewer, who departed the firm in late August, said that 1,100 pharmacies, or around 12% of its U.S. locations, were having their hours reduced. This was a decrease from the 1,600 earlier this year, but a firm executive has stated that it does not anticipate returning all pharmacies to regular business hours by the end of the year.

Stefano Pessina, the executive chairman of Walgreens, said in a statement that the business had been looking for a CEO with "deep healthcare experience."

Related article: Walgreens Pharmacies May Be Closed Next Week; Workers Preparing to Strike Over Pay, Benefits