Over time many pharmacies all over have been understaffed and overworked. Many pharmacists have been trying to get better conditions to have a better flow of things for themselves and also for patients getting their medications. When COVID hit, the pressure became even more so the staff began to feel overworked and underappreciated.

Many pharmacies will be participating in a walk out to show big companies that they can’t just keep putting new policies and more work on them without training others to help out. People have waited hours or not even have their prescriptions filled due to low staffing. Which makes companies receive lots of complaints and people start to seek alternatives to get the medications they need.

The policies that they have to follow also make it hard on them to do their jobs, “Walgreen’s checklist instructs pharmacists to use their ‘professional judgment’ (sic) to determine whether the prescription should be filled or the pharmacy should take the additional step of calling the prescribing doctor to ask more questions,” stated in an article by The National Association Of Medical Doctors.

Some pharmacists have also been using their religious background as a way to withhold medications, especially when it comes to birth control, hormone treatment and contraceptive methods. Workers are using religion to justify why they aren’t able to give out these medications to individuals. A resident of Oakland California, Roscoe Rike stated that he had issues with receiving the hormone-replacement therapy prescriptions, “It was just really surreal…I know that transphobia and transphobic people exist, but that was my first experience of a perfect stranger doing something like that to my face.”stated Rikes to the Los Angeles Times.

Local Resident Tenatsha Morales shared her recent experience with their pharmacy, “I have an auto immune system so I have to send my husband to get my meds and they do give some push back which then has us on the phone with my doctors. When I get my meds delayed it’s hard for me.” There are more stories that have not been shared regarding people having a hard time getting the medication they need. Pharmacies have high hopes that with this strike, it may show big corporations that they can’t just push more onto their workers and expect them to not crack.

Only time can tell what corporations will do now that many businesses plan to join in which could lose them large amounts of money. Considering we are in the midst of flu season, more work will be put onto workers as well. The organizer and supporter of pharmacy labor, Jerominski, asserted that Walgreens and CVS now prioritize vaccinations since their profit margins are much larger than those of the typical prescription. Many workers have been feeling the weight of dealing with it all and want to put a stop to the mistreatment they face and also the patients face.