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 ...
Just 1 woman stole $60,000 from 1 Target using the self checkout.
My Walmart blocks use of the self checkout after 4pm in Porter Ranch, Calif.
The job of a grocery store is to sell groceries. It's not a 'make work' situation.
If California was this stupid a hundred and fifty years ago, we'd still have blacksmiths making horse shoes... need 'em or not, ya gotta keep the blacksmith's job going.
“”If California was this stupid a hundred and fifty years ago, we’d still have blacksmiths making horse shoes””
I often use the concept of subsidies for horseshoes as a way to demonstrate the insanity of subsidies. I used to point out almost every EV we would spot on the road, stating something close to ‘there is another EV we helped purchase.’ My family and friends eventually asked me to stop pointing them out; not because they were mad at me, but they were incensed that we taxpayers all pay for a portion of the EV.
By why is it necessary to legislate this? Why must Big Govt. get involved?
The shopkeepers are probably good capitalists, and can decides for themselves how much AI they need and/or how much shoplifting they can endure.
Regards,
Clearly, that one Master's degree you have in Computer Science wasn't enough! You should have tried bypassing the compressor and diverting anti-tachyons through the main deflector shields!
Regards,
The self checkouts will have to be replaced with employees running the check stands. My question is, is the loss from self checkout theft greater than the pay for check stand operators?
Costco solves the problem of unpaid merchandise rolling out of the store. They check every pay slip against the merchandise going out the door.
Just prosecute shoplifters stealing anything more than $2 per day.
how would this affect theft?
store employees are threatened not to try to stop any shop lifter and will be fired if they do. Police are told, theft below a certain level is not even a crime and prosecutors will not charge them.
“My question is, is the loss from self checkout theft greater than the pay for check stand operators?”
Per hour yes. In their greed to cut labor costs they stepped on their own feet.
Self checkout should be banned..they suck at best seldom if ever work correctly and stealing is a given to many who use them.
Self-checkout machines might not be a good idea in high-shoplifting areas, but can’t the stores decide on their own whether or not to use them?
“... may require grocers to hire more employees, narrowing profit margins and potentially leading to store closures. “
One of many examples of how our economy is now running less efficiently.
lol…
Truly California... CRAZY, as well as STUPID!
Some base math to help bring it into perspective. If you have a product that costs you a dollar and your sell price is $1.50 and someone steals just one you have to give away three for free to break even on cost and profit for that one item.
So you are not just out the profit you would have made, you are also out the cost to replace that item. This adds up three times faster as the true loss. If one in every four of these items are stolen you never do catch up and make a dime.
“Yet ANOTHER DUMB-A$$ politician who supposedly KNOWS more about the retail business than RETAILERS themselves. She is is attempting to CREATE LAWS that will govern how retail must function.”
Exactly right. This is the slow take over of private business by the government. Communism.
Keep in mind this is not just a California problem. Ca is just the initial testing grounds for unconstitutional laws. If the people of Ca put up with it and it is allowed to stand other states then pass and adopt the same regulations. And because it was passed and accepted in Ca first it will stand as actual legal precedent for the other states.
The job of a grocery store is to sell groceries. It’s not a ‘make work’ situation.
Great comment...
“...ban self-checkout options in grocery stores in an attempt to curb retail theft.”
THIS IS 100% BS!
The DEMOCRATS have ZERO CONCERN about retail theft; this simply IS NOT what is driving this. NOT. AT. ALL.
The DEMOCRAT’S friends in the United Food & Commercial Workers International Union are 100% of the reason behind this proposed legislation.
ASSUMING that Retailers would replace self-check-out 1-to-1 with human cashiers (and that’s a very iffy assumption), self-check-out takes away union jobs, and that is THE ONLY, SINGLE, SOLITARY REASON that ANY Democrat in California would EVER REGISTER THE LEAST WHIT OF A CARE about its existence.
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