Bill to add Strict Regulations On Self-Check Out In Stores Sees Support and Strong Opposition

A bill that would add heavy regulations on self-checkout stations in large grocery and drug stores, received both support and opposition in the past week.

Senate Bill 1446, authored by Senator Lola Smallwood-Cuevas (D-Los Angeles), would specifically prohibit grocery and drug stores from providing a self-service checkout option for customers unless specified conditions are satisfied. These conditions include self-checkouts limited to 10 items or less, at least one manual staffed checkout station available, customers prohibited from purchasing certain items, employees only allowed to monitor up to two self-service stations, and employees relieved from all other duties while monitoring.

In addition, SB 1446 would require a grocery establishment or retail drug establishment that offers self-service checkout to include it in a specified analysis of potential work hazards for purposes of their injury and illness prevention programs.

The bill would require a grocery or drug store that develops or implements technology that significantly affects the essential job functions or eliminates jobs or essential job functions of its employees, or that enables self-service, to complete a specified assessment before implementing the technology.

Senator Smallwood-Cuevas authored the bill to protect grocery and drug store jobs from the growing number of self-checkout counters, as well as protect against retail theft because of the nature of self-checkout lines.

“We must protect jobs and ensure worker safety,” said Senator Smallwood-Cuevas recently. “1446 is essential to making sure that we are addressing all of the complexity of this issue of retail theft and most importantly putting workers and consumers first.

In a statement earlier this year, she also said, “Inclusivity is at the center of this legislative effort – demonstrating that California is a state where every person and community has the support, protections and resources needed to thrive.”

A polarizing bill

Since being introduced in February, SB 1446 has proved polarizing. Labor unions including United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), and Legal Groups including Prosecutors Alliance of California have been supportive of the bill because of it’s focus on protecting jobs and allegedly fighting against retail theft.

“The hope is that we can reduce the amount of theft that happens. That’s a much better solution than punishing theft after it occurs,” said executive director of the Prosecutors Alliance of California Cristine Soto DeBerry. “There’s data on this that shows there is stuff that happens at self-checkouts. One of the main deterrents from theft is that there are staff paying attention in the store to your activities.”

However, retail groups and business associations oppose the bill. The California Chamber of Commerce argues that the bill will dramatically increase staffing at stores, which will leads to more money being lost at stores, longer lines, reduced hours, or even store closures because of the narrow profit-margins those stores make. They also charge that the bill’s author is using retail theft as a way to bloat stores hiring people.

In a statement, the California Chamber of Commerce said that “Customers love self-checkout for its convenience, but SB 1446 would add barriers to make it anything but – restricting what shoppers can purchase through self-checkout and forcing grocers to overstaff the area. Although the bill claims to reduce retail theft, it would have the exact opposite effect, undermining a grocers’ ability to defend itself by disallowing locked items like razors from being eligible for purchase via self-checkout. In this way, SB 1446 attempts to take advantage of California’s very real concern about retail theft while actually hurting customers and grocers.”

Ashley Hoffman, senior policy advocate at CalChamber, added, “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. 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.”

In the past few weeks, the polarization has only grown even more. A 4-1 vote in the Senate Labor, Public Employment, and Retirement Committee in Mid-April sparked more groups to take sides. Retail stores are hesitant to hire more people as self-checkout counters have reduced employees and brought in faster check-out times, while studies have also shown that self-check out counters have actually increased retail theft.

“Either way, retailers lose on this bill,” retail legal advisor William Friedlander told the Globe on Monday. “If this passes, stores will greatly reduce the number of self-checkouts. That means less retail theft, but yeah, also long lines and stores having to hire a ton of more workers. If it doesn’t pass, self-checkouts are saved as is, but retail thefts continue.”

“The solution behind all this would be to change around Proposition 47, lower that $950 felony amount to the average that stores lose in retail theft, and bring back justice that way. That’s honestly the overarching way to fix this. But it is, and instead we have SB 1446 giving a ‘Damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ ultimatum. And yeah, we have seen both sides really put more resources into this recently for that reason. But no one wants to bring up the reason why all this is happening, Prop. 47. The author should have focused on that instead.”

SB 1446 is to go before the Senate Appropriations Committee soon.