Walgreens freezes salary

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wagrxm2000 said:
You have to realize what the most important thing is to a DM...... their bonus.

Why would they fire someone who is helping them achieve that? I've heard they will possibly go to a review based raise.

Staff and floaters should be scared ****less, if they aren't performing at the rxms level, they will get the boot.
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"their bonus"
I agree with this 100%. Part of their metrics is profits related. The lower labor costs they have allows them to have greater profits which would increase their bonuses.
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wagrxm2000 said:
You have to realize what the most important thing is to a DM...... their bonus.

Why would they fire someone who is helping them achieve that? I've heard they will possibly go to a review based raise.

Staff and floaters should be scared ****less, if they aren't performing at the rxms level, they will get the boot.
Click to expand...
raises had been review based already for a few years leading up to the freeze
 
Modest_anteater said:
"their bonus"
I agree with this 100%. Part of their metrics is profits related. The lower labor costs they have allows them to have greater profits which would increase their bonuses.
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Labor cost has very little to do with a DM bonus. It’s all metrics based. A store is usually budgeted anywhere around 45-60K for payroll depending on volume. You really think 66/hr and 72/hr really makes a difference?
 
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6GodPharm said:
Labor cost has very little to do with a DM bonus. It’s all metrics based. A store is usually budgeted anywhere around 45-60K for payroll depending on volume. You really think 66/hr and 72/hr really makes a difference?
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More like 52/hr vs 72/hr I don't think it's the main factor but it is a factor. Imagine two old timer pharmacist earing 72 hours. That is 288, 00 USD a year. THat is a huge expense. Compare that to two newer PHarmDs at 52/hr thats a 80K savings a year. U could hire 4 techs for that much at 20k a pop and have them check each other.
 
PharmDminus said:
raises had been review based already for a few years leading up to the freeze
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I'm talking an all or none raise. From what I remember there was an exceeding expectations raise and an achieving expectations raise.

I could see only high performers getting a raise.
 
Modest_anteater said:
"their bonus"
I agree with this 100%. Part of their metrics is profits related. The lower labor costs they have allows them to have greater profits which would increase their bonuses.
Click to expand...

Profits aren't apart of their raise. If it was, our metrics would look completely different.

It's much easier and won't look as bad to simply not give raises then to fire people and hire at lower rates especially the high performers. Now people like you should be concerned they won't find a job.

I really don't understand why you are going into this field. All you do is make us all sound worthless.
 
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wagrxm2000 said:
Profits aren't apart of their raise. If it was, our metrics would look completely different.

It's much easier and won't look as bad to simply not give raises then to fire people and hire at lower rates especially the high performers. Now people like you should be concerned they won't find a job.

I really don't understand why you are going into this field. All you do is make us all sound worthless.
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"Now people like you should be concerned they won't find a job."
There are levels of survival I am prepared to accept.
 
wagrxm2000 said:
Not sure if this is nationwide but it sounds like Walgreens is freezing salaries this year. No raise no matter how high your review is. Guess there's no point in giving raises even if it upsets people especially if you can just hire a new grad. Should be official on Monday.
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Accept it and don't forget to thank them. That's how a good pharmacist is!!
 
owlegrad said:
What, something fall through the cracks?! No way! I love everything about it.

Out of curiosity, do you consider yourself a super-user? There are lots of things I wish I knew how to do but no one seems to know or at least they pretend not to. For example, you know how some products generate a message at OE, for example things like "Dispense in multiples of 30" or "Send 7 day supply only for blah blah blah", do you know how to edit those message pages?
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Not a super-user, but I'm just used to picking up the work load in terms of typing. There's a whole lot of menus in the system that I don't even touch or know what its for haha. I know the alert messages that you speak of but I don't know exactly who (corporate or local) puts those in.
 
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grizzlesgrizzlies said:
Not a super-user, but I'm just used to picking up the work load in terms of typing. There's a whole lot of menus in the system that I don't even touch or know what its for haha. I know the alert messages that you speak of but I don't know exactly who (corporate or local) puts those in.
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I was actually able to figure this out but it turns out the easiest way to remove them is to just ask the help desk to get ride of them.
 
awval999 said:
Surprising from a business standpoint --- trying to avoid negative workplace morale --- they went this route than just give a nominal 0.5% raise.

I totally get the fact they don't care about the pharmacists, but, isn't it better to give a nominal raise than avoid a silent "revolt". Even a 1-2% loss of productivity erases the gains of giving no raise.
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That's precisely the problem with big CEOs. They care more about their own salary and shareholders than the future of the company. Short-term gains directly boost their salary and the shareholders' approval.

Pharmacists are at the bottom of the chain.
 
lord999 said:
That's right, we're from before the explosive gains. Just like everything else, salaries are the margins. And for us who are from the generation where it wasn't all that great, it's kind of funny to see the complaints right now. But survivor's bias is intact, who actually lives to collect on a Walgreens retirement? Think about it this way, how many of your class peers still practice in Walgreens? Surely not more than 50%.

I'd like to see pharmacists actually leave when paycuts happen, but then there's going to be a fresh crop of willing and needy graduates to pick up the slack. It becomes like the nursing and PT markets where there's always a ready reserve when wages move.

Medicine faces the same problem, and so will PA and APRNs when there is enough of a supply though they are right now where we were a decade ago. And this is all before the major cuts upcoming from government. I'll be here to the end, I actually like the practice enough and I'm happy for what it gave me. But no, I don't see the majority of the posters here staying in practice. They have better things to do and are willing to work at doing something else. Unfortunately, there really isn't anything that seems realistically a growth industry out there that a generally educated person can do (there's niche fields like actuary, materials, logistics, etc. to those who really have specialized talents, but it's not as generic as health care qualifications). Entrepreneurship is basically the government's way of saying "we give up" on the institutions more than any particular economic plan, and there is no such thing as Mittelwerk firms in the US.

The rules change so significantly when you've made enough money. You really see the character of people when they don't have to do anything or care about it, and in many cases, you won't like what you see. It's the people who are willing to work after they've made their money that are interesting, those who use these jobs as a means to an end leave the system soon enough. You shouldn't be worried, it won't get significantly worse than when we entered it (low pay, overwork, bad management, precarious labor), these problems are always part of the business. And you should not be worried about the complainers, they'll figure out something for themselves soon enough, or in the cases where they don't choose, management will. The people who understand how the end works should take the rational solutions possible: to remain but in a capacity that you don't have to worry about the end (mine), to use the effective time limit to build enough assets and equity to not need the profession (@Momus and @BMBiology), or to retrain for something else that better fits your actual profile (@stoichiometrist and @Lnsean). I do have somewhat of a criticism of all three approaches, in mine that you can't escape in the end from a broken system, in the asset building where what are assets worth if they are not redeemable, and in retraining in the sense of you're putting a further time and life investment into something that locks you in further. There's no easy answers but to pick some strategy and bear some risk. And as for the sheeple who blithely go about their practices and their debts, let them have to freedom to draw their own conclusions and prepare (or not). I've got enough equity to be a vulture investor in those cases (have my eye on the lakefront property of a couple of very overleveraged physician homes on Lake Harriet). Time is on our side, and the worse it is for them, the better it is for us in retrospect and now.
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What's Stoichimetrist doing? Switching to Computer Science?
 
wagrxm2000 said:
Profits aren't apart of their raise. If it was, our metrics would look completely different.

It's much easier and won't look as bad to simply not give raises then to fire people and hire at lower rates especially the high performers. Now people like you should be concerned they won't find a job.

I really don't understand why you are going into this field. All you do is make us all sound worthless.
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any word on the wage cut for new hires beginning Sept 1st?
 
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Drugsarefun2350 said:
I've heard 14% less than the previous year.
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It seems like Walgreens is trying to set the market for wages and everyone else will follow. If this is a sign of things to come it seems like you'll see pharmacists stuck in their current jobs for a long time.
 
I heard $5/hr cut and if you're a new grad and not licensed by 9/1 you're gonna experience the cut
 
Heard they going to like 51/hr for new rphs
Digsbe said:
I dont think that's feasible. In 2016 most offers were between 54 to 60 an hour. A 14% cut means at best $50 an hour.
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What does “not feasible” mean? Do you mean it won’t be feasible for them to get pharmacists to accept that rate? Or it won’t be feasible to Walgreens to make that decision?

I believe I heard in the $51/hr range but that could be market dependent and I may have heard wrong. I’m pretty sure this is due to take effect in a couple weeks though so maybe we can get better confirmation at that time.
 
hospital pharmacists think this does not apply to them. if Walgreens lowers starting wages to low 50s them the national average will start skewing downward. hospitals pay to have access to regional and national salary ranges. do think other companies will not hesitate to lower starting wages when the average skews lower?
 
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Digsbe said:
I dont think that's feasible. In 2016 most offers were between 54 to 60 an hour. A 14% cut means at best $50 an hour.
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i was in a manager meeting recently where that number was stated by a higher up
 
Unless every ot
Momus said:
New grads seeing this and still pursue pharmacy are *****s. $54/hr is my rate back in 08.
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Mine was $58 in 2016.

I don't know of any other company freezing salaries and allegedly drastically cutting pay for new grads. I know a major grocery chain here pays $63 an hour starting (slower volumes on average too), and too my knowledge CVS still pays above average with annual raises as well. I doubt the market en masse will follow suit, if this is true what I think we will see is very very high turnover with WAG where pharmacists go to "do their time" to get experience and move on out of the company for something better. You can't have such a wide pay discrepancy in very high volume retail pharmacy and expect most people to stay. Heck, people may just leave to work for $60 an hour with a 32 hr a week floater gig commonly seen elsewhere and have the same pay.
 
Digsbe said:
Unless every ot


Mine was $58 in 2016.

I don't know of any other company freezing salaries and allegedly drastically cutting pay for new grads. I know a major grocery chain here pays $63 an hour starting (slower volumes on average too), and too my knowledge CVS still pays above average with annual raises as well. I doubt the market en masse will follow suit, if this is true what I think we will see is very very high turnover with WAG where pharmacists go to "do their time" to get experience and move on out of the company for something better. You can't have such a wide pay discrepancy in very high volume retail pharmacy and expect most people to stay. Heck, people may just leave to work for $60 an hour with a 32 hr a week floater gig commonly seen elsewhere and have the same pay.
Click to expand...

I bet WMT, WAG ,CVS employ 30-40% of pharmacists in this country. If all three of them want to lower wages across the profession it can be done due to the oversupply.
 
Digsbe said:
Unless every ot


Mine was $58 in 2016.

I don't know of any other company freezing salaries and allegedly drastically cutting pay for new grads. I know a major grocery chain here pays $63 an hour starting (slower volumes on average too), and too my knowledge CVS still pays above average with annual raises as well. I doubt the market en masse will follow suit, if this is true what I think we will see is very very high turnover with WAG where pharmacists go to "do their time" to get experience and move on out of the company for something better. You can't have such a wide pay discrepancy in very high volume retail pharmacy and expect most people to stay. Heck, people may just leave to work for $60 an hour with a 32 hr a week floater gig commonly seen elsewhere and have the same pay.
Click to expand...

From a pure business standpoint if companies start experiencing a shift up in supply (applicants) vs their demand (positions to be filled) they’d be foolish to not lower price (salary). If you are suggesting more places will experience a shift up in applicants, I’d be surprised if the salary adjustments didn’t generally follow at some point down the line. On a different note, I wonder if more seasoned wags pharmacists will feel the need to drink more corporate juice. The threat of a dramatically cheaper, much more desperate pharmacist just got that much more real.
 
PharFromNormal said:
From a pure business standpoint if companies start experiencing a shift up in supply (applicants) vs their demand (positions to be filled) they’d be foolish to not lower price (salary). If you are suggesting more places will experience a shift up in applicants, I’d be surprised if the salary adjustments didn’t generally follow at some point down the line. On a different note, I wonder if more seasoned wags pharmacists will feel the need to drink more corporate juice. The threat of a dramatically cheaper, much more desperate pharmacist just got that much more real.
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i am hearing $47/hr for new hires beginning 9/1 but that is yet to be confirmed
 
Gombrich12 said:
It seems like Walgreens is trying to set the market for wages and everyone else will follow. If this is a sign of things to come it seems like you'll see pharmacists stuck in their current jobs for a long time.
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the opposite used to be true - wags set the salary that others tried to match - but it was going up, not down
 
Dred Pirate said:
the opposite used to be true - wags set the salary that others tried to match - but it was going up, not down
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I guess wags can still claim they are the market leader! Regardless of direction, they are leading the charge.
 
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PharFromNormal said:
I guess wags can still claim they are the market leader! Regardless of direction, they are leading the charge.
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this does depress me - I am in hospital and have zero plans to go into retail - but I know it is all related - I see retail applicants come across my desk all the time
 
I just quit WAGS for a direct competitor. I was at $59/hr with 40 hour guaranteed, so it was hard to give up that salary. I started getting written up by DM for weird reasons (like staring at the computer screen too much). I feel the next move will be to secretly get rid of rph with more than 5 years of experience or making more than $55/hr. With frontier and all these programs, I think they are purposely placing so much pressure on pharmacist to burn them out and replace with new grads at lower pay rate. I saw the writing on the wall and escape just in time.
 
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Is this real? Lol might as well just try to he a lead tech at CVS and make 23/hr in CA with no student loans. Under 60/hr is trash I don’t care where you live.
 
6GodPharm said:
Is this real? Lol might as well just try to he a lead tech at CVS and make 23/hr in CA with no student loans. Under 60/hr is trash I don’t care where you live.
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You should. Your salary spells broke where you live.
 
What's disappointing to me is they said if Walgreens doesn't meet expectations, there won't be bonuses next year.
 
6GodPharm said:
Is this real? Lol might as well just try to he a lead tech at CVS and make 23/hr in CA with no student loans. Under 60/hr is trash I don’t care where you live.
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One should be more appreciative of a $50ish or $60ish salary. Most people would love to make what we make. I wouldn’t describe that as “trash”. Salaries up and down the east coast start bellow $60/hr. We earn every last penny. And either way one should be more grateful.

I agree with Prosperity8, I believe the high stress environment which is created by the chains causes pharmacists to quit or allows for write-ups which, from what I’ve seen, causes pharmacists to quit, which then allows them to hire newbies at lower pay.

Not increasing salaries, and adding additional tasks, has the same effect, assuming one has other options.
 
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Mambo#5 said:
One should be more appreciative of a $50ish or $60ish salary. Most people would love to make what we make. I wouldn’t describe that as “trash”. Salaries up and down the east coast start bellow $60/hr. We earn every last penny. And either way one should be more grateful.

I agree with Prosperity8, I believe the high stress environment which is created by the chains causes pharmacists to quit or allows for write-ups which, from what I’ve seen, causes pharmacists to quit, which then allows them to hire newbies at lower pay.

Not increasing salaries, and adding additional tasks, has the same effect, assuming one has other options.
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Cannot agree more.
I graduated 2018 with no job offer and now I'm super thankful to have 32 hour floater position with Walgreens.
I know I'm gonna have tough times ahead of me but I'll try to remind myself to be humble and appreciate the fact that I can make living and start paying off my student loans.

Prosperity8 said:
I just quit WAGS for a direct competitor. I was at $59/hr with 40 hour guaranteed, so it was hard to give up that salary. I started getting written up by DM for weird reasons (like staring at the computer screen too much). I feel the next move will be to secretly get rid of rph with more than 5 years of experience or making more than $55/hr. With frontier and all these programs, I think they are purposely placing so much pressure on pharmacist to burn them out and replace with new grads at lower pay rate. I saw the writing on the wall and escape just in time.
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I'm a bit concerned here because my rate is slightly higher than yours and I'm just getting started...
I don't even live in an expensive city.
 
Wow the time of 80k pharmacist salaries retail is finally here. I knew it was coming but didn't realize it would be so soon. I thought the chains would simply let inflation catch up by eliminating all raises indefinitely. Next on their list is finding sneaky ways to get rid of the old staff and replace them with newbs at the new rates. Maybe make all staff reapply for their positions?
 
Charcoales said:
Wow the time of 80k pharmacist salaries retail is finally here. I knew it was coming but didn't realize it would be so soon. I thought the chains would simply let inflation catch up by eliminating all raises indefinitely. Next on their list is finding sneaky ways to get rid of the old staff and replace them with newbs at the new rates. Maybe make all staff reapply for their positions?
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i dont think they can have us re-interview unless there is a reduction in # of positions. They will do it through attrition....
 
Mambo#5 said:
One should be more appreciative of a $50ish or $60ish salary. Most people would love to make what we make. I wouldn’t describe that as “trash”. Salaries up and down the east coast start bellow $60/hr. We earn every last penny. And either way one should be more grateful.

I agree with Prosperity8, I believe the high stress environment which is created by the chains causes pharmacists to quit or allows for write-ups which, from what I’ve seen, causes pharmacists to quit, which then allows them to hire newbies at lower pay.

Not increasing salaries, and adding additional tasks, has the same effect, assuming one has other options.
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Yeah sign me up for $50/hr with 200k+ loan. Like I said. I’d rather be a lead tech making $24/hr with $0 loans.
 
6GodPharm said:
Yeah sign me up for $50/hr with 200k+ loan. Like I said. I’d rather be a lead tech making $24/hr with $0 loans.
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I'd rather not touch pharmacy at all. I'd try to become a specialist MD or middle manager at faamng companies making 500k/yr... Heck at this point, RN or PA can make as much as pharmacist or more in CA.
 
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This is what it was always going to be.
1. Wages are sticky, current employees wages will be nominally frozen, real wages will decrease over time with inflation.
2. Reduction of hours in order to entice employees to become PICs
3. Wages for new employees are what the market will bear. $48.08/hour is $100,000/year. It wouldn't surprise me for wages to hit there for saturated markets in retail. Good workers will be able to eventually become PIC, make a nominal $10,000 raise or so, and be in the $110,000s for career. Hospitals have been in those salaries ranges there for a while. In Ohio we start at $104,000/year with a PGY1. I know in Pennsylvania is can be even lower than that. Florida as well.

This board has a disproportionate amount of California retail pharmacists who make high salaries in their HCOL state. Wages for community pharmacists are not, and have never been, in the $70/hr range for the other 49 states. You few must realize, that $50/hr +/- 10% isn't horrific in the rest of the Union. Just like I realize, when I look for an equivalent 3/2 1400 sq house out in California that it's not incorrect that those houses are listed for $1.5M+.
 
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awval999 said:
This is what it was always going to be.
1. Wages are sticky, current employees wages will be nominally frozen, real wages will decrease over time with inflation.
2. Reduction of hours in order to entice employees to become PICs
3. Wages for new employees are what the market will bear. $48.08/hour is $100,000/year. It wouldn't surprise me for wages to hit there for saturated markets in retail. Good workers will be able to eventually become PIC, make a nominal $10,000 raise or so, and be in the $110,000s for career. Hospitals have been in those salaries ranges there for a while. In Ohio we start at $104,000/year with a PGY1. I know in Pennsylvania is can be even lower than that. Florida as well.
.
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I agree with your assessment. However, having working in multiple hospital systems for a while, I do want to point something out:
In most hospital systems I worked with, we have min and max for salary level. Max is 150% of the Min usually. Thus, new grad who make $50 per hours can make $75 in 15 years.

In hospitals, experience is valued with premium. Even if there is no market adjustment for pharmacist anymore; we are still protected with our salary range. Also, our range could move that help the bottom or top earner(happened to us this year at 10%). We also have annual review for raises. Evan if no significant increase for the department. We still get annual increase like rest of the hospital employees do(hospital could/would not single us out).

I have been advocating qualified and interested individuals to explore career outside of retail. Someone on the forum once said something about licensed, but unskilled pharmacists are like commodity. We definitely see that effects now.
 
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So for us current pharmacists: isn’t the lowering of starting wages the best (realistic) outcome we could hope for? Something has to deter new people from entering the profession, isn’t a lower starting wage a good place for that to happen?

Obviously I would’ve loved to have some artificial mechanism in place (mandatory residencies with limited availability for example or an illegal limit to the number of pharmacy schools that may exist with class size caps) to prevent people from entering the profession and keeping wages high for everyone, but since we don’t have that what would you like to happen?
 
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awval999 said:
This is what it was always going to be.
1. Wages are sticky, current employees wages will be nominally frozen, real wages will decrease over time with inflation.
2. Reduction of hours in order to entice employees to become PICs
3. Wages for new employees are what the market will bear. $48.08/hour is $100,000/year. It wouldn't surprise me for wages to hit there for saturated markets in retail. Good workers will be able to eventually become PIC, make a nominal $10,000 raise or so, and be in the $110,000s for career. Hospitals have been in those salaries ranges there for a while. In Ohio we start at $104,000/year with a PGY1. I know in Pennsylvania is can be even lower than that. Florida as well.

This board has a disproportionate amount of California retail pharmacists who make high salaries in their HCOL state. Wages for community pharmacists are not, and have never been, in the $70/hr range for the other 49 states. You few must realize, that $50/hr +/- 10% isn't horrific in the rest of the Union. Just like I realize, when I look for an equivalent 3/2 1400 sq house out in California that it's not incorrect that those houses are listed for $1.5M+.
Click to expand...

Whats the average salary for other professions which require six years of college? My wife has a bs in nursing and has a base salary of 85k/yr plus bonus. You can't say $50/hr isn't bad without comparing it to other jobs which require a large investment in college. Local train engineers around here can make the same without college. Add up the money a chain pharmacy makes and compare it to the amount they send to the employees including pharmacists. Say $9 gross profit per rx times 300/day. $2700 gp while paying the rph $600 for a 12 hour day plus another $100 for benefits. i think its obvious at $50/hr rphs are being screwed.
 
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OXYFORALL said:
Whats the average salary for other professions which require six years of college? My wife has a bs in nursing and has a base salary of 85k/yr plus bonus. You can't say $50/hr isn't bad without comparing it to other jobs which require a large investment in college. Local train engineers around here can make the same without college. Add up the money a chain pharmacy makes and compare it to the amount they send to the employees including pharmacists. Say $9 gross profit per rx times 300/day. $2700 gp while paying the rph $600 for a 12 hour day plus another $100 for benefits. i think its obvious at $50/hr rphs are being screwed.
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What nurse makes 85k a year? If you look at the wages posted in the nursing subreddit its more around 50k. Do you live in cali or something?
 
Pharmacy pay isn't even my main source of income. Some of you guys need to level up and get good.
 
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PharmDminus said:
i dont think they can have us re-interview unless there is a reduction in # of positions. They will do it through attrition....
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I doubt they will do it but I know several places that have made people re-interview for their jobs- personally I think it is a jerk move
 
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