the latest wave headline News Incidents of shoplifting and retail theft, as well as videos of people openly walking out of stores with stolen goods, have gone viral, attracting the attention of the media and politicians.Tough on crime advocates repress Tackling shoplifters with tougher prosecutions and tougher penalties.Others emphasize the need rollback For the offenders.
A group of progressive California lawmakers claim Found a better solution: Ban self-checkout machines from stores in the name of fighting crime. In fact, this “anti-crime” bill is nothing more than naked union job protectionism.
The proposed legislation Grocery stores and other retail stores will be prohibited from using self-checkout machines unless a series of conditions are met. These include having at least one staff member for every two self-checkout machines (and that staff member must be relieved of any other duties), allowing only shoppers with 10 or fewer items to use the machines, and ensuring that at least one regular cashier in the lane is also Ready to use.
The bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas (D-Los Angeles), called her approach to crime “smart” rather than “tough on crime.” New York Times: “We have a lot of bills in our Legislature that seek to increase penalties… We know that what makes our communities safe is not more incarcerations and penalties. What makes our communities safe is real law enforcement, with real officers on the job. ground.
To emphasize her point, Smallwood-Cuevas cited study This suggests that retail theft is 16 times more likely to occur at self-checkout machines than at traditional cash registers, costing retailers an estimated $10 billion annually.
However, a closer look at the fine print of the bill reveals the real intent behind it.legislation Authorize Any store looking to install self-checkout machines must first conduct a study analyzing the number of employees “whose duties will be affected by workplace technology,” as well as the “total amount of wages and benefits that will be affected by workplace technology.” And was eliminated.Then the research must be if Release it to employees (or their collective bargaining representatives) who may be affected by the technology and post it “in a location accessible to employees and customers.”
If this were a game of poker, this obligatory study would tell it all: Smallwood-Cuevas and her fellow progressives are trying to shoehorn a pro-union jobs bill into a crime-prevention Trojan horse.
Smallwood-Cuevas was a labor organizer before legislation Professionas well as some of the biggest on the bill Sponsor It’s a union.Press Release About United Food and Commercial Workers website Applauding the legislation, the local chapter president complained that “employers are increasingly implementing automated checkouts to significantly cut staffing and lower labor costs.” The press release did not mention that word crime Use entirely and only theft twice and Shoplifting once. In contrast, Work, Staffingand workers shift Cited 10 times in total.
Efforts to limit self-checkout in other blue states provide hard evidence, such as proposed anti-self-checkout ballot initiative In Oregon, labor interest groups tried to get on the 2020 ballot, explicitly positioning it as a pro-union employment measure.
While a pro-labor bill in California might seem entirely unremarkable, some on the right might buy the bill’s anti-crime frame.Both Fox Business and new york post Published articles emphasized the bill as an anti-theft measure, but rarely mentioned the real motivations behind the legislation.Given the increasing rights union embraceIt’s not hard to imagine an unholy alliance of pro-labor progressives and tough-on-crime populist conservatives supporting bills across the country to eliminate self-checkout.
Supporters of the bill and many media outlets cited two examples of large retail chains making their own internal decisions. reduce or eliminate Self-checkout machines combat theft.mentioned before Statistical data The claim that self-checkout lanes lead to more shoplifting is also frequently made.But the irony is that these views be opposed to The need for government involvement: If self-checkout machines do cause stores to lose significant inventory, then the retailer itself There’s a direct bottom-line incentive to eliminate self-checkout.
No one cares more about inventory loss than store owners, whose entire business model is based on customers actually paying for their products.Here’s why some retailers are re-evaluating the efficacy of self-checkout experiment Use new surveillance strategies, such as “smart video” cameras, to stop the self-checkout process if a customer refuses to scan any item.
The market already has a built-in response to concerns about theft at self-checkouts—it simply doesn’t require more government intervention. If lawmakers still want to ban self-checkout machines, they should at least be honest about why.
