Under new CEO, Walgreens prepares for 267 corporate layoffs

The cuts quantity to 267 layoffs, which can slim down the employees at Walgreens’ company headquarters in Deerfield.

Not one of the layoffs will affect retail staff at Walgreens shops. Employees at name facilities and micro achievement facilities — the place prescription drugs are shipped on to pharmacies, generally with the help of robots — won’t be a part of this spherical of layoffs both.

Walgreens presently has about 238,000 staff worldwide.

The layoffs are one of many pharmacy retail big’s first strategic strikes beneath new CEO Tim Wentworth, who stepped into his position Oct. 23. Wentworth was most not too long ago CEO of Evernorth, the well being companies arm of insurance coverage firm Cigna.

Walgreens spokesperson Fraser Engerman advised the Chicago Tribune the layoffs had been meant to “streamline (Walgreens’) operations and deal with our crucial priorities.”

“We’re grateful for the various contributions by the staff members who might be leaving our firm and we’re dedicated to supporting them as a lot as doable throughout this transition,” Engerman stated in an announcement.

Engerman declined to touch upon when staff will obtain phrase that they’ve been laid off.

This week’s announcement marks certainly one of many rounds of layoffs at Walgreens in latest months, some company and a few on the manufacturing facility stage, because the beleaguered company races to recuperate from heavy monetary burdens in fiscal yr 2022.

Walgreens Boots Alliance posted a $6.4 billion loss within the first 9 months of fiscal yr 2022, due largely to $5.4 billion in expenses associated to opioid settlements. WBA operates a number of corporations together with Duane Reade.

Walgreens laid off 10% of company staff in Chicago and Deerfield in Could. The 504 former staff represented about 1% of Walgreens’ general workforce on the time. The corporate additionally laid off 393 staff at its plant in Edwardsville in August, with plans to close down the southern Illinois manufacturing facility altogether.

Walgreens’ earlier CEO, Rosalind “Roz” Brewer, stepped down Aug. 31.

Some Walgreens retail staff walked off the job in November, becoming a member of nonunion colleagues from CVS pharmacies to protest working circumstances.

Walgreens, a publicly traded firm, has greater than 8,700 drugstores in 50 states.