Walgreens Just Showed Us Why America Needs a National Guaranteed Paid Holiday Standard

[douglas9]

When Walgreens employees opened their schedules in October, many discovered a quiet but devastating change: the company would no longer pay hourly workers for major holidays, including Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Labor Day, unless they actually worked those days.

According to Bloomberg, employees who previously met basic eligibility requirements had received paid holidays even if they didn’t clock in. Now that benefit vanishes unless they physically show up. And this shift came just weeks after private-equity giant Sycamore Partners acquired the company (CNN report).

This isn’t an isolated cost-cutting measure. Walgreens has been laying off staff, closing stores, and restructuring operations for months. Last year, the company announced it would shutter 1,200 stores nationwide. Just last month, it laid off 80 corporate workers. Now it’s holiday pay.

In many ways, Walgreens is telling on America, exposing a simple truth: the United States has no labor standards protecting paid holidays, and corporations will eliminate them the moment they become inconvenient.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/11/18/2354476/-Walgreens-Just-Showed-Us-Why-America-Needs-a-National-Guaranteed-Paid-Holiday-Standard?pm_campaign=trending&pm_source=sidebar&pm_medium=web

[SheltieLover]

1. Walgreens was recently devoured by private equity.

https://www.aha.org/aha-center-health-innovation-market-scan/2025-09-23-walgreens-faces-4-questions-its-future-health-care

[Attilatheblond]

2. Just one more reason to avoid the place

[SheltieLover]

4. Absolutely!

[LastDemocratInSC]

3. It's a smash-and-grab operation by wealthy men with monacles.

[SheltieLover]

5. Yup!

[lark]

6. Walgreens became unusable.

Walgreens near us was great, much better than CVS, so we used them forever. Then they shut the store and consolidated it with one 2 miles further on a major road. This place is now so busy, staff is quitting because it's too much work and confusion, waiting time is forever, and they are sometimes out of stock, which rarely happend at our regular store. We switched back to CVS after 20 years because they still have a store near us and it's not been consolidated with another store so is pretty sane with usually little/no waiting.