What the Pharmacy Guild has accomplished in its first few years

In late 2023, organizers formed the Pharmacy Guild, a union geared specifically toward pharmacy workers, including techs and pharmacists.

The guild was formed after a series of worker walkouts at CVS and Walgreens over unsafe staffing levels and high workloads pharmacy workers said jeopardized patient care. In the first few years of the guild’s existence, it has organized 15 pharmacies with hundreds of members, Chris Eggeman, a CVS pharmacist and leader in the Pharmacy Guild, told Healthcare Brew.

“We’ve grown pretty substantially,” Eggeman said. “We started with a couple stores in Rhode Island, and now it’s a nationwide movement.”

Going national. Pharmacy workers in California, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, and Rhode Island have elected to unionize, according to Eggeman. The members include pharmacy professionals at CVS, Walgreens, and grocery store pharmacy chain Safeway as well as those working in hospitals, clinics, specialty pharmacies, and long-term care facilities.

The guild also has several campaigns in progress, with elections filed in Pennsylvania and Kansas, and is working on negotiating first contracts, Eggeman added. While no pharmacy has finalized a contract yet, he said they are “very close” and “seeing a lot of progress at the bargaining tables.”

The main priority included in the contracts is safe staffing levels to ensure patient safety, he said.

The guild is also fighting for a professional practice committee that would gather pharmacy professionals and leaders together in a formal setting to bring working concerns to light and allow the parties to work through them together, according to Eggeman. And these concerns are not always huge like staffing levels. Sometimes it’s as small as a pharmacy’s air conditioner not working.

The industry response. According to Eggeman, big retail pharmacy chains like CVS and Walgreens have responded to the guild’s movement by saying they “respect our decision, they want to bargain with us, and they’re willing to do things by the book.”

However, the guild has seen efforts to delay the union’s progress, he added.

“A lot of these employers, I think, recognize the power that we have collectively, and…they have a healthy respect for the power of us pharmacy professionals in general. I don’t think they would be fighting or trying to delay things [if] they didn’t realize the impact that this movement has.”

There have also been some big changes to the retail pharmacy landscape since 2023, the same year the guild formed, Rite Aid went bankrupt (twice) and closed all its stores, and Walgreens was bought by private equity firm Sycamore Partners.

While those changes haven’t directly impacted the guild, they “highlight the core issues why we’re doing this in the first place,” Eggeman said.

Healthcare Brew reached out to CVS and Walgreens for comment but did not hear back by publication.

Above and beyond. The number of pharmacy professionals that have voted to join the Pharmacy Guild have exceeded expectations, Eggeman said.

“These things are hard. This is a first in the industry,” he said. “When you consider that we started from scratch, I’m definitely happy with where the momentum has brought us and definitely looking forward to seeing that continue to grow.”