Pharmacy workers at a Walgreens in Vancouver voted 10-0 Sept. 3 to unionize with with the Pharmacy Guild, a new union affiliated with the healthcare arm of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM).
Eleven workers at the Salmon Creek location, including pharmacy technicians and two pharmacists, are now represented by the Pharmacy Guild.
The Pharmacy Guild launched less than a year ago, on the heels of pharmacy staff walkouts at Walgreens and CVS pharmacies around the country.
Ann Walls, a pharmacist at the Vancouver Walgreens, said working conditions have deteriorated since she became a pharmacist in 1996.
“I’ve worked for a lot of different companies, and it’s all the same issues,” Walls said. Staffing is inadequate, vaccination expectations are higher than feasible, and wages, particularly for pharmacy technicians, are too low, she said. “There’s pressure, no matter what pharmacy someone works in,” Walls said.
The Vancouver pharmacy was the seventh workplace — and first in the Pacific Northwest — to join the Pharmacy Guild, which was formed by a group of pharmacist social media influencers. Organizers told The Lund Report that unionization efforts are in progress at other stores in Oregon and Washington.
“The issues aren’t with the store management or even middle management. It’s more about the corporate policies, like our staffing levels,” Walls said.
Other unions also represent pharmacy workers, like United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 555, which represents roughly 500 Kaiser Permanente pharmacy workers in the region.
Walls’ ballot asked whether she wanted to unionize and whether she wanted pharmacists to be in the same unit as pharmacy technicians. The answer to both was yes.
“It was important that we do it as a team,” Walls said. “A pharmacist’s day is either good or bad based on their technician team. So I feel like, personally, if we organize together and we stick together, we have more power that way.”
