Posted on 05/08/2024 6:30:19 PM PDT by lowbridge
A new California bill has the potential to ban self-checkout options in grocery stores in an attempt to curb retail theft.
Senate Bill 1446, introduced by Democratic state Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, would “prohibit a grocery or retail drug establishment from providing a self-service checkout option” unless conditions such as ensuring that no more than two self-service checkout stations are monitored by one employee are met, according to a summary of the proposed legislation.
The bill also mandates that stores access how using artificial intelligence or other technology may cut jobs and “significantly affects the essential job functions of its employees.”
Smallwood-Cuevas said self-checkouts are responsible for $10 billion in losses and cause 16 times more losses than check-outs done with a cashier.
“As self-checkout has become more commonplace, loan workers have become easy targets for theft and violence as they are forced to stock merchandise, operate checkout stations, and cater to customers” all while “trying to monitor their stores for retail theft,” Smallwood-Cuevas said to Fox Business.
While the legislation has garnered support from labor unions, including United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), and legal groups, including Prosecutors Alliance of California, it’s faced criticism from the California Chamber of Commerce, which is concerned the new legislation may require grocers to hire more employees, narrowing profit margins and potentially leading to store closures.
“In part it’s codifying some requirements that I think, from our perspective, are a little heavy-handed, as far as getting down into the granularity of how business or a store needs to operate,” Ashley Hoffman, senior policy advocate at CalChamber told the outlet. “For example, the grocery space, where they’re operating on pretty thin margins. You know, when you’re having to make these drastic adjustments or adjust staffing ratios, that can be a big cost impact.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
So what difference is that going to make when criminals are not prosecuted for theft and stores basically require their employees to just let the thieves walk out the door with the goods?
The honor system will not work when the majority of society is dishonorable.
Makes no difference in California as long as you can steal anything under $1,000.
Truly, CA legislators are morons.
Seems like the retailers could handle this thinking themselves if they chose to, I don’t think this is the kind of laws the retailers were looking for from the governments.
It seems so typical that the government’s action is to tell the business how to run their check out rather than focus on the crime and criminals.
Ultimately you’ll shop from a screen in the store or at home or on your phone and your stuff will be robotically picked and delivered to you. The ratio of floor space between retail and warehouse will be flipped.
Ay, por favor-who writes this stuff? Have they ever heard of checking their grammar, or using an app like grammerly if they can’t proofread? I’m pretty sure “loan workers” are employed at banks and other financial businesses. “Lone workers” at retail stores are the easy targets for theft and violence-because they are “alone” at work-duh! yes, I’m being a grammar cop and that is just fine...
“no more than two self-service checkout stations are monitored by one employee”
Good grief!
That is correct-and it is ridiculous-the friend I work for went to Cali last month-LA area to visit relatives. We were joking about him hitching the shop trailer to his truck, going to a Home Depot on his way out of Cali, filling it with $999.00 worth of building materials we need for a little job, bypassing the checkout, loading them in the trailer and hauling ass back to Texas-no harm, no foul...
It’s not about curbing theft. It’s about securing higher labor costs.
It just means that stores will have to hire thousands of union scale cashiers and baggers.
Which means, long checkout lines, price increases, and..."Sorry, I do not speak English."
I am surprised they haven’t banned self-ordering machines at fast food places and force people to order from a person. A lot of fast-food workers lost their jobs with their recent pay raise.
Another useless feel-good law. How about California and the big cities get SERIOUS about fighting crime? Get rid of Soros DAs, hire tough Law & Order DAs and prosecuting attorneys, get tough police chiefs, expand police presence, get beat cops walking the streets, keep bums moving, hire more police, end no-bail release, hand out LONG sentences to crooks and crime syndicates, automatic deportation for illegal aliens caught stealing.
Stores will stop abandoning cities if you do that. Cities will become livable again. We had a country like that once before and we can have it again.
Problem solved. Easy Peasy.
Victor Hanson is always saying that governments always focus on trivial problems to show people they are “doing something” while ignoring big problems that require tough and often unpleasant solutions.
Who wants to go to a store anyway when 30 seconds of shopping can place the order for the products on Amazon and it will be delivered the same or next day?
I went to buy razor blades yesterday. All of them were locked up. It takes forever to hunt down an employee (floor staffing is still way down), then they need to go find the key.
To get the $6 off on the blades, I had to clip a digital coupon in the Walgreens app on my phone. The iPhone was running out of storage and had offloaded the app, so it had to re-download to my phone. Then I got logged in and had to use the same phone number that is on my Walgreens account. Was it MY mobile? My wife’s mobile? Our old home phone land line? All told, it took about 20 minutes to get the blades and do all that crap with their app. It was the third merchant this week that made me get their app to get their best price.
Shopping has become an enormous PITA.
… Lola Smallwood-Cuevas!
Demonstrates something all wrong about the California way.
Correct!
if a store doesn’t want its merchandise stolen, the store will remove self-checkouting all on its own
without need of the stupendous wisdom or dictatorial orders from the corrupt politicians
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