During April and May, 2009, surveyors working for United to Win, a consortium of trade and services unions, visited 310 CVS stores in 9 states and found expired infant formula, medication and/or dairy products for sale at 180 CVS stores, more than 58% of stores surveyed.
The new findings include:
- More than half of the CVS stores surveyed in the Metro Chicago are had expired products for sale including milk that was three weeks past its sell-by date.
- 69 percent of CVS stores surveyed in Metro Atlanta had some expired products on their shelves including CVS-brand medication more than two years past its sell-by date.
- Two-thirds of the CVS stores surveyed in Greater Pittsburgh had expired products for sale including infant formula that was six months past its sell-by date.
- There were also significant problems with expired products for sale at CVS stores surveyed in Indianapolis, Indiana; Providence, Rhode Island; Bridgeport Connecticut; Newark, New Jersey and in Baltimore, Maryland where surveyors purchased medication for infants that was more than three years past its expiration date.
New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has been investigating CVS for months and may sue the company.
The CureCVS campaign is related to the “card check” issue and the Employee Free Choice Act, an important part of President Obama’s campaign platform.
CVS issued a statement responding to allegations by CureCVS in which they claim that the campaign is part of pressure tactics aimed at
It is important to recognize that the driving force behind these accusations is a consortium of labor unions called Change to Win (CtW). Since early 2007, CtW has threatened to disparage our company unless we agreed to waive our employees’ right to vote in confidential union elections. This right has been guaranteed by federal law for decades, and we believe our employees should retain the freedom to exercise this right. CtW’s inaccurate allegations and accompanying media outreach is their latest attempt to achieve this objective.
CureCVS is sponsored by Change to Win, an organization created by a consortium of seven affiliated unions:
International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Laborers’ International Union of North America
Service Employees International Union
United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America
United Farm Workers of America
United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW)
UNITE HERE
CVS is likely correct that the unions are pressuring CVS but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong; they may have simply found a weakness with CVS and are exploiting it. Having union members fan out to local CVS stores across the country is hardly scientific so it is hard to say whether the data they reported is accurate but we would like to know what is happening here in New Rochelle.
We want your help in finding out if the problem CureCVS claims exists in New Rochelle so we will ask readers to engage in our own unscientific survey. As our readership grows we would hope to do more of this sort of thing. It is known as Crowdsourcing, described on Wikipedia as “a distributed problem-solving and production model. Problems are broadcast to an unknown group of solvers in the form of an open call for solutions. Users–also known as the crowd–typically form into online communities, and the crowd submits solutions.”
If you see expired products for sale at a CVS store, snap a photo and send them to newrochelletalk at me dot com. We will give it a couple of weeks and the post any photos we receive.
CVS has 4 stores in New Rochelle and several near to the border of New Rochelle.
New Rochelle
Store #522 625 North Avenue
Store #530 309 Main Street
Store #2578 16 Weyman Avenue
Store #5454 1296 North Avenue
Larchmont
Store #1233 2444 Boston Post Road
Store #3148 21 Chatsworth Avenue
Store #1949 1310 Boston Post Road
Eastchester
Store #2432 375 White Plains Road
Pelham Manor
Store #1959 4760 Boston Post Road