Purser Weighs In on Why Hospital Workers and Pharmacists Are Striking in BBC Article

November 14, 2023

BBC

Gretchen Purser

Sociology Department

Center for Qualitative and Multi-Method Inquiry

Advocacy and Activism

Income

Labor

United States

BBC

Gretchen Purser

Hospital workers and pharmacists at companies including Kaiser Permanente and Walgreens are organizing, demanding better conditions to help with pay, under-staffing and patient care.

"Pharmacy workers at CVS or Walgreens have been saddled with this exacerbation of workplace duties without a corollary growth of staffing," says Gretchen Purser, associate professor of sociology. "They feel very overwhelmed, very overburdened, very overworked. And none of that has come along with increased wages, either."

It's a "wild" swing, she adds, from the way those same workers were celebrated in the throes of the pandemic. "Three years ago, they were being lauded as heroes—literally heroes," Purser says, "and now they're just left to the aftermath of all this."

Read more in the BBC article, "Why so many healthcare workers are walking off the job."