California introduces a bill to ban self-checkout machines, targeting theft prevention

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.”

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Those who oppose the legislation also claim that an alternative would be to make changes to Prop 47, lowering the threshold for a felony in retail theft.

“The solution behind all this would be to change around Proposition 47, lower than $950 felony amount to the average that stores lose in retail theft, and bring back justice that way,” retail legal adviser William Friedlander said in an interview with the California Globe. “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.”