Unions Try to Protect Jobs in CA With a Bill to Limit Self-Service Checkouts

Opinion

Portrait of CalMatters Columnist Dan Walters

By Dan Walters, CalMatters Commentary

Published 1 year ago on

August 15, 2024

California unions push legislation to limit digital technology in retail, sparking debate over job protection and innovation. (Reuters/Mike Blake)

SB 1446 aims to protect unionized jobs by limiting self-service kiosks and setting specific staffing levels in stores.
The bill requires retailers to give 60-day notice before introducing new technology that could impact employee job functions.
Grocers argue the legislation would limit customer choices and increase operational costs, potentially raising grocery prices.

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When the industrial revolution erupted in 18th century Britain — replacing handwork with machinery in the manufacture of goods — many of the affected textile workers responded by attacking and disabling the machines.

Dan Walters

CalMatters

Opinion

The rebels became known as Luddites, so named for “General Ned Ludd” or “King Ludd,” a mythical figure living in Sherwood Forest. In the more than 200 years since, the moniker has been applied to anyone who resists introduction of new technology, particularly in the workplace.

Over the last half-century digital technology has driven a new industrial revolution, completely changing the nature of work as it destroyed old economic sectors and created new ones.

The Evolution of Journalism in the Digital Age

When I began my career in journalism 64 years ago, I and other reporters wrote our stories on paper, using cast iron Underwood typewriters, after which the “copy” was read and sometimes altered by an editor with a lead pencil. It was then set in metallic type by a composing room worker and transformed into a metallic printing plate by other workers who installed it on an immense printing press to produce newspapers.

Today I’m writing this column on a Hewlett Packard computer. Virtually all the information being cited in the column was gathered from online sources, including details of a bill from the Legislature’s website and videos from CalMatters’ Digital Democracy archives.

When I’m finished, the column moves electronically to an editor using the same digital technology and the finished product then is electronically published on the Internet. CalMatters exists because of technology, while newspapers still producing paper copies are struggling due to competition for advertising from digital rivals.

California’s Role in the Technological Revolution

California has played the seminal role in the new technological revolution, but it’s also a center of resistance.

The bill to which I referred earlier is Senate Bill 1446, which sailed through the Senate earlier this year but is now enmeshed in a clash between labor unions and retailers, particularly grocers, in the Assembly.

In recent years, supermarket operators have introduced kiosks in which customers can check out themselves without lining up to have a clerk physically process the contents of their carts.

In years past, checkout clerks would have to know the price of each item, if it wasn’t marked, or refer to a paper price list. Technology, in the form of barcodes, sped up checkouts by cashiers, but also allows customers to scan their own items and pay with credit cards.

Some stores have experimented with having scanners determine total purchases without processing individual items and/or identifying customers by scanning their hands and linking them to a pre-designated credit card.

The Battle Between Unions and Technology

Supermarket technology has reduced the numbers of workers needed to process checkouts, and SB 1446 aims to protect unionized jobs by limiting use of self-service kiosks and setting specific staffing levels. It also requires grocers and other retailers to give 60-day notice before introducing new technology, such as “self-checkout robotics, wearable sensors, and scanners that eliminate, automate, or electronically monitor the core job functions of an employee.”

The legislation’s author, Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, a Los Angeles Democrat and former union organizer, and the bill’s sponsors contended during an online news conference Wednesday that it’s needed to protect the safety of employees from thieves and aggressive customers, but it’s clearly aimed at protecting store workers from being replaced with machines.

Grocers, meanwhile, say the legislation would limit customer choices and mandate operational costs that would be reflected in grocery prices.

It’s not the first time such legislation has surfaced. For instance, recent appropriations for upgrading port facilities have contained prohibitions on installing labor-saving automation. The advent of artificial intelligence will likely lead to more such clashes.

Luddism is apparently not confined to 18th century Britain’s textile industry.

About the Author

Dan Walters has been a journalist for nearly 60 years, spending all but a few of those years working for California newspapers. He began his professional career in 1960, at age 16, at the Humboldt Times.

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. For more columns by Dan Walters, go to calmatters.org/commentary.

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