
Self-Checkout: A Union-Busting Technology - smacktoward
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/04/self-checkout-a-union-busting-technology
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mikl
The Luddite perspective: Anyone using automation is "stealing a job from
someone who needs it".

Never mind the fact that automation is why we have such wealth and plenty, and
why you can spend your time writing Luddite blog posts, instead of hoeing the
back forty, desperately hoping for a good harvest, so your family doesn't have
to starve this winter.

Sure, the people who used to work as cashiers will have to find something else
to do. But the upside, for everyone, is that it becomes cheaper to run a
supermarket, and thus competition can give us even cheaper groceries.

~~~
lawlessone
it's not really automation though.

The shop have found a way to make you do the work they previously paid people
to do.

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goldcd
That's just a tiny incremental change to the supermarket you're already in.

The idea of 'pre-packed food, with a bar-code you have to pick up yourself' \-
quite a leap from standing at the counter asking the aproned worker to cut,
weigh and wrap your piece of cheese. Then possibly wait for them to open the
barrel for your next item etc.

~~~
telesilla
I really enjoy shopping at smaller markets in Europe that still have counter
staff. Spain in particular still has many of them. It's much more pleasurable
but I wonder, if it's because of the lower wages there that they can still
afford to do this, as in northern europe I can't remember the last time I saw
anyone except a shelf-stocker in the big supermarkets.

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gowld
The supermarket itself is union busting. Before Big Grocery took over, stores
paid people to take turns order and fetch all your groceries for you.
Customers walking through aisles like a volunteer stock clerk is exploitation!

If a customer doesn't want or need a checkout clerk, they shouldn't be
required to pay for one. Employees are entitled to good working conditions and
fair wages, not entitled to unnecessary jobs.

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ragazzina
>If a customer doesn't want or need a checkout clerk, they shouldn't be
required to pay for one.

It's too late for this. Any cost saving in using self-checkout will be
transferred to the supermarket, not to customers.

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coredog64
Grocery as an industry has one of the lowest profit margins of any industry.
It’s also very competitive. So I would expect that savings from self-checkout
will offset other rising costs (e.g. $15 minimum wage) and allow consumers to
continue to enjoy low costs.

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ZebZ
Where's the line between technology advancing forward and weeping for buggy
whip makers?

Self-checkouts allow several people to check out a few items at once, leaving
the cashiers to deal with those with full carts. They are not inherently evil.
It's a good technology (when implemented well with functioning machines...)

I'm all for treating employees with fairness and dignity. But expecting
employers to not innovate in a competitive marketplace for the sake of keeping
employees doing low-skill work makes no sense.

So... where's the line? Do we demand no automation in order to protect these
workers? Or do we demand additional safety nets for these workers and the
opportunity for them to improve their skills if they so choose?

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ben509
There are (at least) two lines.

One is that we can't keep people stuck doing the same thing as we need to
improve productivity for people to see salaries going up.

In the short run, that usually means a given person is taking on more
responsibility. So a person starts out as a clerk and is completing X
transactions each day, and their wages come out of that value they add. As
they become more senior, they take on more advanced roles like management that
enable others to complete their jobs, thus adding more value and resulting in
higher wages.

But not everyone can go the management route, whereas automation is a way far
more people can get higher wages. If that one person can monitor several self-
checkout machines, that person is completing several times as many
transactions an individual cashier could. That's more value that person is
able to add to the business, and thus higher wages for what is largely
unskilled labor.

So the second line is whether people who are immediately displaced by
automation are able to find jobs elsewhere. And that's a big unknown. So far
we've seen automation expand overall economic opportunity, but Past Results
Are Not A Guarantee Of Future Performance.

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lucozade
Utterly outrageous that Mr Loomis is publishing this on a blog. A blog! Think
of all those print workers (unionised print workers I may add) who are out of
work because he didn't publish this as a pamphlet.

Or not.

Sure not all technology is progressive but this blinkered approach is
exceptionally damaging. Ironically, the people that it's damaging most are the
very people he purports to support.

By all means lobby for companies to invest in retraining but stringing out
deprecated jobs and giving vulnerable people false hope is just plain mean.

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larrywright
I've seen similar comments about automation on Facebook recently. People seem
to have short memories with regards to all the jobs that have come and gone
due to the march of technology.

30+ years ago, most offices had a "secretarial pool" \- people whose entire
job was to take handwritten or dictated material, and type it on a typewriter.
Busy professionals would never be expected to do something like this, but not
everyone had a dedicated secretary, so a shared pool of people who could type
fast made a lot of sense.

Of course, when PCs became commonplace in offices, people started doing their
own typing, and the secretarial pool became a thing of the past. I don't
recall hearing about a huge issue with unemployed typists, so presumably those
people found new jobs, likely more rewarding ones.

I'm sure that the introduction of PCs onto virtualy every desk in an office
20-25 years ago eliminated other positions as well. I don't hear people
proposing that we get rid of computers so that those people can all have their
jobs back.

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empath75
I'm not in favor of keeping jobs around just for the sake of keeping people
employed. I am in favor of doing whatever it takes to financially support
people whose jobs are being replaced by automation while they seek new work,
though. Mindless retail jobs are not a career with a future in general, no
matter how much you try and hold the tides back. Checking groceries is just
absolutely tedious, soul destroying work and nobody should be forced to do it
to make a living.

I also don't have a very good opinion of grocery store unions, because by the
time I was working at the grocery store, the union had caved repeatedly on
contracts for new employees, so that the people who had been working there for
decades had locked in all the best hours, and full time work and great
insurance and a pension, while all the new employees were held to part-time
hours with shit benefits and the worst hours, with absolutely no chance of
ever moving to full time. This wasn't a case where eventually you'd have
seniority and move up to the better contract. You were locked into your tier
forever once you were hired.

(I say this as someone who spent several years working as a grocery clerk,
checking groceries and stocking shelves, and whose father and grandfather both
spent their entire careers working at grocery stores.)

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eropple
_> I am in favor of doing whatever it takes to financially support people
whose jobs are being replaced by automation while they seek new work, though._

Loads of people say this, and I do too, but it's also important to realize
that _this basically doesn 't happen_. Retraining doesn't materially exist and
hasn't been shown to work en masse, while the American safety net for
unemployment-without-retraining is minimal.

The challenge isn't "finding new work." It's "being suitable for any work."
And we still seem to try to avoid grappling with that problem.

~~~
empath75
I realized that as I was typing it, but there's not much I can do about it
other than vote for politicians who claim to want to do that. I can't help it
if half the country votes against their own economic self interest repeatedly.

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wyldfire
> Anybody who cares about the rights of workers in this country should be
> absolutely ashamed to use a self-checkout stand.

This position is ludicrous.

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jcims
Some of the comments in recent stories around unions make me think that they
are quite different in the US vs those found in Europe specifically and likely
elsewhere.

I'm wondering if anyone from outside the US that is familiar with their labor
unions could comment if they would expect to see statements like this as well?

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tontonius
>They convince you do to labor for the grocery store chain for free.

Free from money, yes but not free from value. As there's usually little-to-no
line to the self-checkouts, I save time. For a little effort on my part I
don't have to wait in line (something I hate more than checking out my stuff).

>The self-checkout stand, destroyer of jobs

Vintage luddite. I'm honestly flabbergasted that people who gladly use modern
technology like internet, smartphones, computers etc never stop to reflect on
the sheer number of jobs their gadgets have destroyed. But the self-checkout
stands, this is outrageous!

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telesilla
It's difficult to explain to people that manual labour is just going to go
away, and educating the populace is the only way to be employable in the
future.

I am curious what kind of society this will lead to - will it mean an increase
in overall education or will it be a race to the bottom where only the most
impractical work that robots can't do, is reserved for those who have no
knowledge skills?

Though, my first job was in a kitchen while I was studying, as I didn't yet
have the skills to get an knowledge job. I was lucky to have government
support back then however, so while I was at the threshold of just paying
rent/food and needed that job back then, it wouldn't have needed much more
from the public coffers so I could have spent those manual-labour hours
studying.

Edit: I forgot about the crossover of skilled labour: plumbers, electricians,
some kinds of farm work, others I haven't considered. I guess I just see those
are getting more and more specialised and need _less_ labour rather than none.

~~~
crdoconnor
It's difficult to explain partly because over the last 10 years there has been
more unskilled than skilled job growth which contradicts that narrative.

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brobdingnagians
I've heard that there is a huge need for machinists and that the pay is great,
but all the newly graduated college kids want office jobs, so there aren't
enough machinists to go around. Not sure if it is true, just heard the rumor,
but would be interesting if it is...

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jes
A friend of mine works in the tool and die industry in the United States, as a
machinist.

He indicated that dies bought from China and elsewhere are often 1/3 to 1/4
the price of dies made in America. They don’t last as long and the tolerances
are usually looser than American dies. They may contain flaws that require
some rework before being put into service.

Still, they are purchased in great volume, and he has trouble finding shops
that can pay for someone with his expertise. He is overqualified relative to
customer demand.

~~~
RandomInteger4
If he can't find work at the salary he's demanding then that means the market
no longer supports said salary and he must adjust his expectations downward.

We can't expect to have a monotonically increasing salary throughout our
lives; see: 2008 Financial Crisis for instances of folks with masters degrees
taking minimum wage service industry jobs.

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ZanyProgrammer
Disclaimer: I worked for several years as a cashier as an adult.

I don’t think they do take away jobs, or if they do, its less than supposed.
The real problem is that grocery is a low margin business to begin with, and
for so many chains it’s a race to the bottom. That means cutting down on the
number of cashiers, but that doesn’t exactly mean that self checkouts are
taking over.

Almost every store that has self checkouts in addition to staffed checkouts
has at least one person normally helping watch the self checkout registers.
_Thats_ basically why they aren’t taking a lot of jobs yet. Under normal
circumstances, if you got rid of the self checkouts, at most you’d only get
one extra register open on average.

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toast0
The self checkout machines are great(ish) for small purchases, but I would
hate to do a real grocery run on one. All of the ones I've used insist on me
keeping the products in the 'bagging area' during the transaction, and there
wouldn't be any room. You also can't get any sort of speed going, because it
gets grumpy when you scan more items while it's announcing your items and
their prices and the savings. No way to tell it you have 6 of whatever either.

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chrisseaton
> I would hate to do a real grocery run on one

When we do a full shop we take the barcode scanner with us around the shop,
and scan as we take things off the shelf, so we don't need to unload anything
at the till.

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jcims
What stores have those?

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ben509
Kroger's at least.

~~~
jcims
Ah! Are those the things on the blue and white stands? I saw something pop up
out front last week but didn't look too closely.

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jaabe
We have them in the supermarket where I shop, and I detest them.

If I want to use my own bags, I’ll need to have each signed in as legal extra
weight by the clerk. If I want to buy alcohol, I need to be verified as over
18 by the clerk. They are situated lower, than the regular checkouts, so I
have to bend my back a lot more to use them.

I know this makes me sound like an angry old man, but I’m not alone. Because I
detest them I’ll happily queue up for the regular checkouts. I say queue,
exactly because I’m not alone. I’ve stood in 10 minute queues for the regular
checkouts while the self-checkout right next to me was empty for the entire
time.

I don’t see myself ever using one again unless the supermarket starts paying
me to do so, so I’m actually not too concerned they’ll take over too much
work.

I’d be much more worried about the Amazon take on shopping. I mean, that’s
automation that actually improves my experience as a customer, these self-
checkouts are not.

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emiliobumachar
Any form of automation can be considered anti-union, is this one special in
any way?

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metalliqaz
No. It's just of interest this week because Stop and Shop workers are
striking.

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ummwhat
The entire theory of free trade and/or technological development is that the
capital saved on the efficiency gains gets reinvested somewhere else and
ultimately becomes new jobs. Anyone unemployed will eventually be retrained
and no net job loss occurs.

For some jobs (like factory workers) this doesn't work so well in practice as
people beyond a certain age (let's say 40) can't just cycle back into entry
level work.

All that said, automating store clerks has no downside. No one is a career
store clerk. This is an entry level job practically by definition.

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grawprog
>No one is a career store clerk.

I worked with several career store clerks when I worked in a store. There were
3 or 4 people I worked with who started working there when they were younger
than I was at the time(19) and had been working there well into their 40's.
They gave me inspiration. I knew I never ever wanted to be them.

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RickJWagner
Some kind of adjustment needs to be made. The rise of automation is clearly
going to take away some lower-tier jobs.

I don't think banning the technology is the right answer. Maybe hiring more
blue-collar workers in different jobs (think cleaners, gardeners, guards,
etc.) might be the ticket. Of course, taxes will have to go up because
somebody has to pay for these things. But we'd have a cleaner, safer world
with less unemployed people.

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lawlessone
I never considered self checkout a form of automation.

All it does it moves work previously done by the cashier to the customer.

I don't believe any labor is saved.

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RandomInteger4
Labor is saved by the mere fact that touch screen technology is now so
ubiquitous that the training costs of labor for these jobs is so low that they
don't qualify as valid jobs any longer. POS systems are now intuitive, so much
so that even a toddler can operate one, and that's no exaggeration.

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mAEStro-paNDa
It appears to me that a lot of the responses to this are missing two very
important key points this short post illuminates.

1\. Self-checkouts have become another a way to diminish the power of the
strike.

2\. It's not really automation. The labor has been shifted onto the customer.

We can have a discussion about efficiency and innovation, but that's not
exactly what's being pointed out here.

~~~
RandomInteger4
It is automation, but the concept being automated isn't that obvious; they're
automating theft prevention mechanisms.

The real shift that allowed for this isn't so much the development of these
POS systems, but rather the ubiquity of touch screen devices in our daily
lives. In the past these POS systems probably required training, but now
they're intuitive. Our adoption of technology adjacent to the POS industry has
lowered the bar for entry such that now even a toddler can operate a self
checkout; that's not even an exaggeration.

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mwcremer
Seems like this is pretty similar to pumping your own gas. It would be
interesting to compare, say, Oregon and California, both for employees and
employers.

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Causality1
"Grocery carts are an incredibly anti-worker technology. Every time you don't
force an employee to follow you around carrying your groceries you're
contributing to job loss."

Fuck off, mate. You know how much I love being able to make sure I'm paying
the right amount for each item? How nice it is for my groceries to not be
slammed around and damaged by a bagger? The sweet relief of being able to put
my money and wallet away with no pressure from people standing six inches
behind me?

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crdoconnor
The weak point of self checkout is theft. Also, if there is a strike going on
that's an ideal time to engage in shoplifting.

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wetpaws
Amazon Go don't have this kind of problem

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crdoconnor
Amazon are notoriously cagey about how their tech works and have been slow to
roll it out for precisely this reason.

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wetpaws
My point that it is a technical problem, not conceptual.

