Walgreens quietly ends generous employee perk before the holidays

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Over the past decade, pharmacy giant Walgreens, with over 8,000 stores nationwide, has struggled financially due to several factors.

The company’s finances have been impacted by opioid-related claims and litigation settlements, costing it billions of dollars. Walgreens has also been affected by inflation, tariffs, high interest rates, labor shortages, increased competition from other pharmacy retailers, and changing consumer behavior, according to its latest 10-Q SEC filing.

In its third-quarter earnings report for 2025, Walgreens reported a net loss of $175 million, as its U.S. retail sales decreased by 5.3% year over year.

Amid recent challenges, Walgreens has closed stores over the past few years. Within the next three years, the pharmacy retail chain plans to close roughly 1,200 stores, including 500 this year alone, Newsweek reported.

Many of Walgreens’ competitors, such as CVS and Rite Aid, have also been closing stores, raising concerns about the state of the pharmacy retail industry.

The rate of pharmacy store closures in the U.S.:

• Pharmacy store closures in the U.S. have doubled in recent years, with nearly 1 in 3 pharmacies closing between 2010 and 2021.

• Between 2018 and 2021, the number of pharmacies declined in 41 states, affecting 91.6 million people.

• Pharmacy closure rates were higher in predominantly Black (37.5%) and Latino (35.6%) neighborhoods, compared to predominantly white ones (27.7%). Sources: Health Affairs, University of Southern California

“At the same time many states are making efforts to expand the scope of pharmacy services beyond dispensing drugs to include the provision of preventive and emergency care, we found that there are – for the first time for at least a decade – fewer pharmacies available to provide them,” said Dima Mazen Qato, senior author at USC Schaeffer Institute, in a press release.

Walgreens delivers bad news to store employees

As Walgreens rapidly closes its stores amid financial struggles, which has resulted in retail employees losing their jobs, it has also decided to remove six paid holidays for its hourly store workers, according to a recent report from Bloomberg.

This includes Thanksgiving and Christmas. Walgreens’ policy has always allowed workers who met specific requirements to receive additional compensation for working on holidays.

Related: Read the leaked email Meta sent to the employees it just fired

Now, if workers want to get paid at all, they have to work on those days. However, those who do work on holidays still have the opportunity to receive extra compensation.

More Labor:

• Intel quietly pulls back major employee commitment amid troubles

• Google quietly doubles down on a controversial workplace trend

• Samsung cracks down on an alarming workplace problem

The cuts to paid holidays raise a significant concern, as there aren’t always enough shifts for employees to work on those days, according to Bloomberg. Last year, Walgreens kept its 24-hour locations open on Thanksgiving, while closing others.

Walgreens employees were reportedly informed of this change last month, shortly after private equity firm Sycamore Partners acquired the company in late August for $10 billion.

Companies nationwide are making harsh cuts to employee benefits

Walgreens’ decision to cut holidays for employees comes at a time when employers, battling economic uncertainty, have been making significant cuts to workers' salaries and benefits over the past year and a half.

According to a survey conducted by Resume Templates last year, 27% of companies have decreased their current employees’ salaries, while 51% of employers have reduced the benefits they offer to employees.

How companies are cutting costs amid economic challenges:

• Approximately 23% of companies have reduced paid time off (PTO)/vacation days.

• Also, 21% have decreased or removed stock options/equity grants.

• In addition, 20% have reduced or eliminated meal allowances, while 19% have scaled back or stopped 401(k) matching, and 16% have cut health care benefits. Source: ResumeTemplates.com

“If companies keep cutting salaries, reducing benefits, and denying salary increases to current employees, they are going to lose talent,” said ResumeTemplates Chief Career Strategist Julia Toothacre in the survey. “They will also create a culture of mediocrity. People will go above and beyond if they’re appreciated and compensated, but if they aren’t, they will pull back on productivity.”

“Unfortunately, when organizations inevitably lose employees, many will blame their inability to obtain and retain talent on entitlement or a talent shortage,” she said. “There are a lot of talented professionals out there right now, but workers want to be compensated for the level of experience and value they bring to an organization.”

Related: Google quietly restricts generous workplace policy for employees

This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Nov 19, 2025, where it first appeared in the Employment section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.