5 ms·

Self-Checkout: A Union-Busting Technology

25 points by smacktoward 8y ago

emiliobumachar 8y ago
Any form of automation can be considered anti-union, is this one special in any way?
- metalliqaz 8y ago
  No. It's just of interest this week because Stop and Shop workers are striking.
slothario 8y ago
We could also eliminate farm technology and bring back all those farm jobs. 99% of us could work the fields again, and there'd never be a jobs shortage again.
gowld 8y ago
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.
- ragazzina 8y ago
  >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.
  - coredog64 8y ago
    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.
  - terryschiavo22 8y ago
    I would guess that the cost savings are negligible. It's about convenience foremost.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    Super markets are a thin margin industry and initial capital is low (you only need to start with one store). Unless you live somewhere where the local planning Czars can say no to anything less classy than whole foods there will be plenty of competition. I'm not too worried.
- PorterDuff 8y ago
  The biggest change in my memory was the evolution from family-run business to chain store. Growing up, there were probably a dozen small markets in my home town. The next level of de-skilling was offsite butchers and scanning registers (our best local store also doesn't have scales, everything is by quantity or is pre-weighed). The next big change might well be no checkout at all. No doubt, Safeway is going to complain about Amazon drone-delivered groceries like poor Borders bitching about Amazon (after killing off thousands of small bookstores). Generally, I'd say that the biggest change in grocery stories happened in the 1960's, not now.
empath75 8y ago
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.)
- eropple 8y ago
  > 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 8y ago
    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.
telesilla 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
  - brobdingnagians 8y ago
    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...
    - jes 8y ago
      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.
mikl 8y ago
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.
- slothtrop 8y ago
  > competition can give us even cheaper groceries If only it were so competitive. But that's spot on, automation will remain a constant at any rate. Whatever the solution to structural unemployment it won't involve hampering innovation.
- lawlessone 8y ago
  it's not really automation though. The shop have found a way to make you do the work they previously paid people to do.
  - sevensor 8y ago
    Including the part where you have to flag a manager because the POS terminal is a POS.
  - binarymax 8y ago
    This is exactly right. They just lowered the barrier and hardened for wider use of point-of-sale machines. And some of the hardening is very annoying. True automation would be something that actually saves time. It takes me longer to self-checkout than it does for a professional cashier.
  - mikl 8y ago
    The customer does some of the work (scanning and handling the goods), and other parts are automated (payment, tallying, etc.). It's a bit like using an ATM instead of visiting the bank to withdraw cash, or pumping your own gas instead of having an attendant do it. The end result is the same, though. Society becomes slightly more efficient, since the time I used to spend waiting for the cashier to scan my goods is now spent productively, and usually the lines get shorter, so I can get my groceries quicker, spending less time overall, even if I have to take active part in the process instead of just standing around.
crdoconnor 8y ago
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.
- wetpaws 8y ago
  Amazon Go don't have this kind of problem
  - crdoconnor 8y ago
    Amazon are notoriously cagey about how their tech works and have been slow to roll it out for precisely this reason.
    - wetpaws 8y ago
      My point that it is a technical problem, not conceptual.
- RandallBrown 8y ago
  Theft might be a problem, but it's still probably cheaper than paying people to do a job the customers will do for free. I believe major grocery stores are pretty good about estimating shrinkage and I doubt they'd continue to use self checkout if it wasn't profitable. I personally love self checkout lines.
ZanyProgrammer 8y ago
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.
- toast0 8y ago
  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.
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    > 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.
    - jcims 8y ago
      What stores have those?
      - chrisseaton 8y ago
        All the stores in the UK. You just grab a device like a big phone, scan, put in your bag or pocket, sync at the checkout, and go. No need to re-pack or speak to anyone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-checkout#Scanning_while_shopping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-checkout#Scanning_while_s...
ZebZ 8y ago
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?
- ben509 8y ago
  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.
wyldfire 8y ago
> 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.
- jcims 8y ago
  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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ummwhat 8y ago
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.
- grawprog 8y ago
  >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.
- isoskeles 8y ago
  > No one is a career store clerk. Literally some mentally retarded people have this as a sort of career. It allows a sense of belonging in or contribution to society. Not saying that’s a reason not to automate it, but some people will keep getting left behind by the trend.
jaabe 8y ago
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.
lawlessone 8y ago
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.
- RandomInteger4 8y ago
  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.
Causality1 8y ago
"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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mwcremer 8y ago
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.
tontonius 8y ago
>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!
mAEStro-paNDa 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
lucozade 8y ago
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.
- larrywright 8y ago
  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.
RickJWagner 8y ago
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.

25 points by smacktoward 8y ago

emiliobumachar 8y ago

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

metalliqaz 8y ago
No. It's just of interest this week because Stop and Shop workers are striking.

slothario 8y ago

We could also eliminate farm technology and bring back all those farm jobs. 99% of us could work the fields again, and there'd never be a jobs shortage again.

gowld 8y ago

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.

ragazzina 8y ago
>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.
- coredog64 8y ago
  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.
- terryschiavo22 8y ago
  I would guess that the cost savings are negligible. It's about convenience foremost.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Super markets are a thin margin industry and initial capital is low (you only need to start with one store). Unless you live somewhere where the local planning Czars can say no to anything less classy than whole foods there will be plenty of competition. I'm not too worried.
PorterDuff 8y ago
The biggest change in my memory was the evolution from family-run business to chain store. Growing up, there were probably a dozen small markets in my home town. The next level of de-skilling was offsite butchers and scanning registers (our best local store also doesn't have scales, everything is by quantity or is pre-weighed). The next big change might well be no checkout at all. No doubt, Safeway is going to complain about Amazon drone-delivered groceries like poor Borders bitching about Amazon (after killing off thousands of small bookstores). Generally, I'd say that the biggest change in grocery stories happened in the 1960's, not now.

empath75 8y ago

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.)

eropple 8y ago
> 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 8y ago
  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.

telesilla 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.
- brobdingnagians 8y ago
  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...
  - jes 8y ago
    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.

mikl 8y ago

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.

slothtrop 8y ago
> competition can give us even cheaper groceries If only it were so competitive. But that's spot on, automation will remain a constant at any rate. Whatever the solution to structural unemployment it won't involve hampering innovation.
lawlessone 8y ago
it's not really automation though. The shop have found a way to make you do the work they previously paid people to do.
- sevensor 8y ago
  Including the part where you have to flag a manager because the POS terminal is a POS.
- binarymax 8y ago
  This is exactly right. They just lowered the barrier and hardened for wider use of point-of-sale machines. And some of the hardening is very annoying. True automation would be something that actually saves time. It takes me longer to self-checkout than it does for a professional cashier.
- mikl 8y ago
  The customer does some of the work (scanning and handling the goods), and other parts are automated (payment, tallying, etc.). It's a bit like using an ATM instead of visiting the bank to withdraw cash, or pumping your own gas instead of having an attendant do it. The end result is the same, though. Society becomes slightly more efficient, since the time I used to spend waiting for the cashier to scan my goods is now spent productively, and usually the lines get shorter, so I can get my groceries quicker, spending less time overall, even if I have to take active part in the process instead of just standing around.

crdoconnor 8y ago

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.

wetpaws 8y ago
Amazon Go don't have this kind of problem
- crdoconnor 8y ago
  Amazon are notoriously cagey about how their tech works and have been slow to roll it out for precisely this reason.
  - wetpaws 8y ago
    My point that it is a technical problem, not conceptual.
RandallBrown 8y ago
Theft might be a problem, but it's still probably cheaper than paying people to do a job the customers will do for free. I believe major grocery stores are pretty good about estimating shrinkage and I doubt they'd continue to use self checkout if it wasn't profitable. I personally love self checkout lines.

ZanyProgrammer 8y ago

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.

toast0 8y ago
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.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  > 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.
  - jcims 8y ago
    What stores have those?
    - chrisseaton 8y ago
      All the stores in the UK. You just grab a device like a big phone, scan, put in your bag or pocket, sync at the checkout, and go. No need to re-pack or speak to anyone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-checkout#Scanning_while_shopping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-checkout#Scanning_while_s...

ZebZ 8y ago

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?

ben509 8y ago
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.

wyldfire 8y ago

> 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.

jcims 8y ago
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?

deleted 8y ago

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ummwhat 8y ago

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.

grawprog 8y ago
>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.
isoskeles 8y ago
> No one is a career store clerk. Literally some mentally retarded people have this as a sort of career. It allows a sense of belonging in or contribution to society. Not saying that’s a reason not to automate it, but some people will keep getting left behind by the trend.

jaabe 8y ago

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.

lawlessone 8y ago

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.

RandomInteger4 8y ago
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.

Causality1 8y ago

"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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mwcremer 8y ago

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.

tontonius 8y ago

>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!

mAEStro-paNDa 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.

lucozade 8y ago

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.

larrywright 8y ago
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.

RickJWagner 8y ago

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.