Unions’ Assault on Grocery Store Self-Checkout In Long Beach: Inflating Costs to Shield Jobs from Innovation

[Sorry for the late column - I’m on a flight and American Airlines had a wifi-fail…]

🕒 5 min read

Your Grocery Store, Your Choice — Or Maybe Not for Long

When you go to your local grocery store, you expect choices. You want different brands, different prices, organic or not, and you want options when it comes to checking out. Maybe you prefer the traditional checkout line with a cashier and someone bagging your groceries. Or perhaps you head for self-checkout because you only have a few items, the regular lines are too long, or you just don’t feel like talking to anyone.

But most people don’t realize there is a growing effort to take that choice away. Powerful labor unions, working closely with Democratic lawmakers, are pushing regulations to make self-checkout so costly and complicated that stores will drop it. So here’s what’s really happening.

Unions’ Local Triumph: Long Beach as the Testing Ground

Self-checkout was sold as a simple idea — faster lines, fewer employees at the register, and maybe even lower prices. But in Long Beach, that promise was derailed by a union-backed law called Safe Stores are Staffed Stores. It took effect last month.

The ordinance forces grocery stores to assign at least one worker for every three self-checkout machines, limits customers to 15 items, and bans self-checkout for any locked items like alcohol or razor blades. Supporters say it’s about safety and theft prevention. But it’s not…

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Below the paywall today:

• What this law actually requires,

• How the “safety” argument falls apart,

• Which chains shut down self-checkout,

• Who pushed this through in Long Beach

• How unions want to take this statewide...