WAGS cutting 1,000 jobs

[tlh908]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123142648857764437.html?mod=testMod

Looks like Walgreens is cutting 1000 jobs to save money. The good days of pharmacy are over now that they have diploma mills to supply all the pharmacist they want at cheap salaries. Pharmacy is not unlike other industries where expensive staff is replaced with younger and cheaper staff. And the new staff will not get paid near what the old staff did.....
As an aside, I live in a rural community where there is still supposed to be a pharmacy shortage and work for CVS. We have stopped hiring pharmacists since we already have plenty and not enough work for everyone.
The pharmacists shortage is over. I just feel sorry for those starting out in pharmacy - when they graduate they will be lucky to have a $35/hour job....

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[thelonius]

You work for CVS? That really sucks.

 

[wellwell]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123142648857764437.html?mod=testMod

Looks like Walgreens is cutting 1000 jobs to save money. The good days of pharmacy are over now that they have diploma mills to supply all the pharmacist they want at cheap salaries. Pharmacy is not unlike other industries where expensive staff is replaced with younger and cheaper staff. And the new staff will not get paid near what the old staff did.....
As an aside, I live in a rural community where there is still supposed to be a pharmacy shortage and work for CVS. We have stopped hiring pharmacists since we already have plenty and not enough work for everyone.
The pharmacists shortage is over. I just feel sorry for those starting out in pharmacy - when they graduate they will be lucky to have a $35/hour job....

If you think that the shortage is over, you are obviously not anywhere near the southeast, which in some states has a shortage as big as the drought.

 

[117296]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123142648857764437.html?mod=testMod

Looks like Walgreens is cutting 1000 jobs to save money. The good days of pharmacy are over now that they have diploma mills to supply all the pharmacist they want at cheap salaries. Pharmacy is not unlike other industries where expensive staff is replaced with younger and cheaper staff. And the new staff will not get paid near what the old staff did.....
As an aside, I live in a rural community where there is still supposed to be a pharmacy shortage and work for CVS. We have stopped hiring pharmacists since we already have plenty and not enough work for everyone.
The pharmacists shortage is over. I just feel sorry for those starting out in pharmacy - when they graduate they will be lucky to have a $35/hour job....

The OP failed to mention that NONE of the job cuts are in pharmacy, they are in corporate and field warehouse positions, according to news articles I googled dated today.

 

[MountainPharmD]

Did you read the whole article? I read a similar article that said all cuts would be from corporate staff. They were going to use early buyouts and retirements to cover it. No where did it say pharmacists were going to lose thier job. In fact the article I read on MSN.com said there would be no store layoffs.

 

[BMBiology]

Such bad timing. Just when I was planning to move out of my parents' house too!

 

[Jooks]

Please dont jump to conclusions and speak about the pharmacy job market IN a pharmacy Forum when u dont your facts straight...they are cutting corporate jobs

 

[All4MyDaughter]

Did you read the whole article? I read a similar article that said all cuts would be from corporate staff. They were going to use early buyouts and retirements to cover it. No where did it say pharmacists were going to lose thier job. In fact the article I read on MSN.com said there would be no store layoffs.

Yeah they had this story on my local news (business news) and that's what they said too. Said it was all voluntary stuff.

 

[acetyl]

Here's a better link to a newspaper that doesn't require a subscription to read:
http://www.suntimes.com/business/1367946,w-walgreens-job-cuts-layoffs-economy-010809.article

It's as people have said above.

If Walgreens wanted to really start losing money, as in go out-of-business losing money, they would start laying off pharmacists. We'll be the last to go in that drug store.

 

[themorphinerule]

Even if they did start cutting Pharmacist positions, which I highly doubt, it would only be temporary. We had a visit from the CEO and CFO of Smiths Drugs and this guy monitors the Wall Street Journal. He said things are shakey, and a few may fall but it will definitely be temporary and we'll bounce back strong as ever. My concern, though, is two-fold. I'm not sure where I want to go: clinical or retail. Clinical pharmacists say retail pharmacists are easily downsized by robots, lol, and my own thoughts are that clinical pharmacists haven't proven their value to the point that a hospital couldn't replace them with nurses for cheaper (talking about decentralized hospital pharmacists, not staff pharmacists). So who knows... Seems like since day one everyone in my education has been trying to scare me/us out of pharmacy. Which is why I'm ecstatic our school now has a PA program that they're thinking of merging with the PharmD program... I will definitely have a fallback plan.

 

[WhiteSnows]

Hey, whoever said pharmacist is over, please do not major in pharmacy. At this economic depression, things will change temporarily, and pharmacy is not out of this situation. However, in a long run we still need pharmacists because of the population always increases, people are getting fatter, older chronic diseases, the use of medications increases, not enough doctors, nurses, elder pharmacists retired. We need a new and young generations to replace the old B.Pharm. Pharmacy profession will always change unpredictably. There can be new laws that allow pharmacist to do other things because they want to make machine to replace some of the jobs of pharmacists do. This economic will get better at least the end of 2009. So whoever is going to graduate after 2009 need not to worry. Even if we get paid $40 per hour, we still make a lot more than other professions. In addition, we have many opportunities as a pharm.D holder to involve in business, nuclear, so on...

 

[Pharmpills]

People have to get old and with old age comes disease so the demand for pharmacist will be there. Plus aton of our money are taken out to pay for medicare, medicaid, etc which helps pay for medication. Sure the demand might go down eventually but whoever said pharmacist will be lucky to make $35 an hour is a dork. Even if they did then other careers would tumble as well. If scripts aren't being filled then that means Doctors aren't getting patients so with little amount of patients then their salary will go down as well and so would the whole medical profession but that's highly unlikely and the whole economy would have to crash.

 

[TonyRx]

Just a little clarity...

I work as an Assistant Mgr(3 yrs) for WAGS in Orlando, and we received an email from the CEO prior to this news hitting the papers, and he explained what will be happening.

The 1000 layoffs/buyouts are part of WAGS new "Rewiring for Growth" Campaign for 2009-2011. It will potentially save the company $1-2 billion dollars.

Yes, it is mainly focused around "voluntary" layoffs to Corporate/District Staff, coupled with severance packages and what not. Store level employees including Pharmacists will not be affected, but District level Pharmacy Supervisors, Regional Managers and Executives will be. The main bulk of the the people being "layed-off" are doing so voluntarily with a severance package and so forth.

Walgreens is going to completely restructure the Corporate ladder of operations, from Store Ops to Pharmacy Ops. This means that the chain of command from CEO, Vice-Pres, all the way down to the District Managers and Pharmacy Supervisors will be tinkered with. They are going to consolidate, eliminate and create positions along the way.

As for store level Pharmacists and Pharmacy operations, this should not affect them at all.

But, like anything in life...this is what we are told and we all know companies have been known to lie(no surprise there).

This isn't going to change my mind of pursuing a career as a pharmacist one bit though.

 

[gochi]

you guys are shocked? lol...it was not hard to predict this.

 

[crossurfingers]

This was taken from an update on the WAGS website:

Voluntary Separation Program

NEW Jan. 8, 2009 – Walgreens is announcing a voluntary separation program for many corporate and field management employees. This will be followed by an involuntary separation program, beginning in February. Please visit the Voluntary Separation Program Details page to learn more.

This whole plan is supposedly going to span a couple of years. They are always talking about the changes employees are going to see in the future, but they never get into specifics. I'm guessing they're not going to give any info until they implement it so they don't scare of their employees prematurely into finding another company to work for.

 

[tlh908]

Please dont jump to conclusions and speak about the pharmacy job market IN a pharmacy Forum when u dont your facts straight...they are cutting corporate jobs

Who works in these corporate jobs? WAGS (like CVS) promotes from within, so there are pharmacists all over the ranks of these corporate jobs. People point out that store level jobs aren't affected, but that doesn't mean that pharmacists at higher levels are affected. Now think, when management consolidates, this means less opportunity for advacement for store level pharmacists. So it does affected all pharmacists.
Plus, WAGS is slowing down expansion which will also reduce the number of needed pharmacists in the future.
Pharmacy will not be the first highly paid profession to be forced in wage freezes and cuts all in an effort to maximize profits. We need more competition in pharmacy besides just the big 2.

 

[BMBiology]

Who works in these corporate jobs? WAGS (like CVS) promotes from within, so there are pharmacists all over the ranks of these corporate jobs.

Yeah like I really care that some a-hole VP pharmacists at the corporate headquarter, who think prescription transfer is a great idea, got terminated.

 

[MountainPharmD]

Who works in these corporate jobs? WAGS (like CVS) promotes from within, so there are pharmacists all over the ranks of these corporate jobs. People point out that store level jobs aren't affected, but that doesn't mean that pharmacists at higher levels are affected. Now think, when management consolidates, this means less opportunity for advacement for store level pharmacists. So it does affected all pharmacists.
Plus, WAGS is slowing down expansion which will also reduce the number of needed pharmacists in the future.
Pharmacy will not be the first highly paid profession to be forced in wage freezes and cuts all in an effort to maximize profits. We need more competition in pharmacy besides just the big 2.

There is very little room for advancement anyway. I agree with the BMBiology. Like I give a rats butt about some idiot corporate pharmacist, opps I mean business man, who hasn't practiced pharmacy in 20 years. Maybe we will get lucky and have less people to come up with stupid ideas like gift cards for new and transfered prescriptions.

 

[meister]

It's not those guys who are getting terminated, it's recently promoted DMs who are getting sent back down to the staff RPh level because people finally figured out their stupid gimmicks don't warrant their $200k/year salary and bonus.

 

[loo]

It's not those guys who are getting terminated, it's recently promoted DMs who are getting sent back down to the staff RPh level because people finally figured out their stupid gimmicks don't warrant their $200k/year salary and bonus.

Bingo. I hope they also get rid of the boot-licking, yes-men/women who are crappy pharmacy supervisors as well. You know, the ones who don't want to work in the trenches...

 

[rxdout]

There have been no public statements by WAG about laying off pharmacists and the ones who work in the stores are not part of the 1000 jobs being cut. But, I have heard from multiple sources that they are laying off pharmacists in FL. After implementing Power, they shortened the hours at many pharmacies and eliminated the need for a 3rd or part time RPH at each store.....

 

[Printo]

You're crazy.

Pharmacy is very much alive & pharmacists are very much in demand.

Wake up! The entire world is going into recession/depression. Everyone is suffering. Anyways, those were corporate jobs they cut, not pharmacists.