This week, two Company Chemists Association (CCA) members have announced major job losses. ASDA have announced that thousands of jobs are at risk in their business and Boots announced a further round of job losses at their head office, reported in the media as likely to result in around 300 job losses. While these are not frontline pharmacist roles, there is still an impact on pharmacists and their workload.
While no store based pharmacists may lose their jobs from these particular two decisions, pharmacists may still see friends or family lose their employment. In addition, less staff in support functions could increase workload in store, so there are very good reasons for frontline community pharmacists to be concerned about such news. It can also be predicted that other employers will announce job losses in future.
Should any individual facing the threat of redundancy be a pharmacist and PDA member, even though these recently announced changes do not affect frontline pharmacist roles, we will of course support them as an individual. However, we recognise that the vast majority of those affected will not be pharmacists and therefore do not qualify for membership of the PDA.
While the PDA cannot take non pharmacists into membership, the union still cares passionately about their job security and recommend that other colleagues join an independent trade union that is appropriate for their role and for where they work. The PDA reiterate the advice that other members of the community pharmacy team should first check if your employer already recognises an independent trade union and if they do, find out how to join that union.
If a community pharmacy employer doesn’t already recognise a trade union then the PDA recommend that non-pharmacists consider joining USDAW who are the leading trade union on the high street in Great Britain. To support those colleagues the PDA have published a leaflet giving more details about how pharmacists can join PDAU and other members of the community pharmacy team can join USDAW. You can download a copy of the leaflet here:
Pharmacists and pre-registration pharmacists can join PDAU here
Other member of the community pharmacy team can join USDAW here