Members’ unease has persisted despite “verbal assurances that the company aims to minimise pharmacist job losses”, the PDA wrote in a statement released over the weekend (January 22).

Several pharmacists have approached the union to flag that they were advised by local management of proposals to reduce their hours by “more than 10%”, the PDA claimed.

Boots UK reiterated to C+D today (January 24) that the proposed reduction to business hours in selected pharmacies is an average of 6% across the UK, although it acknowledged that this figure could vary across individual branches.

However, it would not comment on whether the proposed changes to some pharmacies' opening hours will indeed result in a 10% or more reduction to pharmacists' hours in some cases.

Potential pay reduction

The PDA estimated that a 10% or more reduction to pharmacists’ working hours could result in “a reduction of several hundred pounds of pay each month for the pharmacist”, should they decide to continue working for the multiple. 

Although each pharmacy’s proposed reduction in working hours could “be measured in single digits”, the aggregated impact on patients would be equivalent to “closing tens of pharmacies entirely”, according to the PDA's calculations, it claimed.

Reducing opening hours across the chain in this manner could therefore have “more impact on the face-to-face availability of community pharmacy to the UK public” than the multiple’s divestment of around 200 pharmacies over the past two years, as those did not affect “patients’ access” or “the hours of employment available to pharmacists”, the union wrote.

“It is very difficult to see how such a change fits with declared NHS strategies to direct more patients to go to their local pharmacy,” the PDA stated.

PDA: Significant cuts to hours could force redundancies

Any significant cuts to a pharmacist’s salary could render their employment at Boots unsustainable and force them to “leave the company with redundancy”, according to the PDA.

The union also claimed that “some employment contracts for pharmacists at Boots contain a clause that restricts individuals from working for other community pharmacy employers” and called on the multiple to waive the clause in light of its recent announcement that it will “no longer be able to provide sufficient hours for some employees”.

Boots declined to comment on this issue.

In an email sent to Boots UK employees earlier this month, CEO Sebastian James wrote that it is “realistic to think” that Boots UK could become “an independent company again”. However, “there will be a period when the exact way forward is not known”, he added.

Sky News reported on January 11 that US private equity firms Bain Capital and UK-based CVC Capital were pursuing a multi-billion-pound takeover of Boots UK.

Meanwhile, supermarket chain Asda is reportedly considering a takeover of Boots UK, according to an article in the Mail on Sunday published on January 15.