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By Maya C. Miller, CalMatters
It’s been a long day at work, and you still need to stop by the store on your way home.
To spare yourself more social interaction, you make a beeline for the self-checkout station, praying for a quick and painless transaction.
“Please wait, help is on the way,” the machine’s feminine voice coos, taunting you as you try desperately to flag down a clerk.
Following a failed, union-backed effort last year to strictly regulate self-checkout machines, California Democrats are trying again to set guidelines that they say will improve the efficiency of self-service stations across the state’s grocery, drug and big box stores.
Senate Bill 442, from Los Angeles Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, who chairs the Senate committee on labor and public employment, would require stores to have at least one dedicated worker there to help self-service customers. Stores would also be required to operate at least one traditional staffed checkout lane at all times and restrict the type and number of items a customer could bring through self-checkout.
“This is about supporting our workforce, to make sure that they’re safe, but mostly to also make sure that they’re providing the level of service that customers expect and deserve,” said Smallwood-Cuevas on the Senate floor earlier this summer before the bill passed that chamber 26-10.
But the state’s business community, especially its grocers, still opposes the effort. Instead, without pointing to concrete studies or evidence, they say more regulations will drive up prices due to added labor costs that companies will pass along to consumers.
“This seems like a clear example of why Californians pay the highest prices for groceries, regardless of what checkout line they go through,” said Daniel Conway, a lobbyist for the California Grocers Association, at an Assembly Labor and Employment Committee hearing in June.
It’s not surprising that Smallwood-Cuevas, a former labor organizer herself, is carrying such a bill given her close alignment with the two union heavyweights cosponsoring the legislation: the California Labor Federation and the United Food and Commercial Workers. She votes their way more than 95% of the time, according to the Digital Democracy database, and has received nearly $30,000 in total campaign contributions from the groups since 2021.
Under the measure, stores would have to display signs that limit customers to 15 items or fewer in the self-checkout lanes and also designate one employee whose only assigned duties are to monitor the stands. Notably, the bill explicitly states that stores would not be penalized for failing to enforce the item limit, a condition that the business groups say is nonsensical. Proponents of the provision argue that signs will increase peer pressure and self-policing without strict enforcement.
More items banned from self-checkout
And building on a 2011 law that banned the sale of alcohol at self-checkout stations, another union-backed effort, Smallwood-Cuevas’s new bill would expand the ban to any items that require identification to buy, such as tobacco products, and anything with anti-theft security devices that must be removed by an employee.
Stores that want to add new self-service checkout stations must notify employees and their unions in writing at least 60 days in advance or face a $1,000 penalty per violation per day.
Democrats have largely voiced support for Smallwood-Cuevas’s bill, calling it a much needed remedy for the headache that is self-checkout.
Assemblymember Ash Kalra, a San Jose Democrat, scoffed at Conway’s assertion that self-checkout is an efficient and preferable choice for customers and said customers are often forced to use them since stores have reduced the number of cashiers.
“I don’t know if I can disagree with more points that were just made from our friends with the grocers,” Kalra told Conway during the late June hearing. “You must not be going to the stores if you think there’s an improved shopping experience from these self-checkouts.”
Opponents have expressed concern that a newly added provision in the bill would invite local municipalities to pass their own more stringent standards, as the city of Long Beach recently did, requiring stores to assign at least one clerk for every three self-checkout machines.
Companies warn that such a patchwork of laws would make it difficult to run stores with multiple locations, creating a burden for both owners and customers.
“Only a uniform, statewide approach can provide the consistency that both employers and employees need to thrive,” wrote Ryan Allain, a lobbyist for the California Retailers Association, which is currently opposed to the bill.
Even though Republicans admitted that they, too, despise the self-checkout process, lawmakers slammed the bill for overstepping businesses’ authority to regulate themselves and raise operating costs that would ultimately be passed along to the consumer.
Sen. Shannon Grove, Republican of Bakersfield, called it “completely unacceptable” for the Legislature to prevent businesses from introducing automation that could lower costs after committing to an affordability agenda.
“It’s a labor thing, I get it,” said Sen. Kelly Seyarto, a Murrieta Republican, on the Senate floor in June. “I’d like as many people to work as possible, but I’d also like to afford the groceries.”
Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat from El Segundo, was among a few Democrats who expressed slight hesitations about the state preemption of local rules but voted for the bill anyway.
“I understand you’re going to be working with the grocers on that challenge,” he said in June.
The bill must clear the Assembly Appropriations Committee after lawmakers return from their summer recess on Aug. 18 before it goes to the floor for a vote.
Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom, wouldn’t state a position on SB 442, saying the governor’s office “doesn’t typically comment on pending legislation.”
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GETTHE – “Eggs are a lot cheaper.”
LOL no they’re not. Do you even do any grocery shopping? Eggs are still up, albeit down a little from the election period. Almost everything has gone up by a $1 or 2 at the stores just in the last couple of weeks. Coffee, especially. My Pete’s coffee went up from $16.99 to $19.99 in a week.
You can say all the words you want, but there is objective proof of increasing grocery prices.
Truth, I don’t buy eggs or coffee, but everything else sure has gone up, while there are more and more self-check lanes and the corporations are paying fewer and fewer humans.
They are lying, flat-out.
Unfortunately these people are idiots and will still blame Biden or the dems for surge in cost of living instead of the orange taco who is directly making everything worse.
Sounds like a good idea.
does anyone else wish the state legislators would stop making laws?
Grocery prices have already risen recently. I thought they were supposed to go down?
Many large stores (Target, Walmart, Albertson’s, etc.) have reduced and/or plan to completely eliminate self-checkout stations. Self-checkout can be very efficient…until it isn’t. Getting stuck behind folks who don’t know how to use the system, or tries to buy booze, card not accepted, or my favorite…scanning code missing or “corrupted.”
Eggs are a lot cheaper. Dairy is about the same as the last couple years. Meat went up a lot before 2025. Fruit and vegetables are relatively cheap in California. And the use of ….”risen”????
Government should not create more rules, but they keep on doing it.
Too bad Santa Barbara is too good to have a Walmart.
Let’s circle back in 3 months when the tariffs are in full swing, labor shortages worsen, and corporations adjust for inflation, and see how you’re feeling about grocery prices.
You should probably realize that tariffs are a bargaining tool for the President. He’s looking to use leverage to help our economy. Looking to make deals unlike our last president who didn’t have that min desert, to say the least. As we’ve already seen, the tariffs may or may not come to pass. It depends on the negotiation, kid. Your fantasy outlook isn’t grounded in reality.
Oh no! You actually think this is part of a bigger plan AND you think it’s working? Yikes.
Ok, now THIS right here is an uneducated and fact-deficient statement.
“Your fantasy outlook isn’t grounded in reality.”
Oh the irony.
A lot cheaper THAN WHAT? And what does that have to do with this article?
Groceries, etc are more expensive, there are more self-checkout lanes and fewer human checkers, and these corporations are lying to us. They. Are. LYING. Groceries, etc. will NOT go down in price, AND the self checkout stations DO screw workers out of their jobs. When the corporations threaten the public with “prices will rise if we aren’t allowed to automate everything”…yeah…I call BS on that, too.
They. Are. LYING.
“Beef prices are skyrocketing in the United States. How much? Prices surged 11.3% in July over the year as drought ravaged U.S. cattle and Trump’s tariffs hit major suppliers. Prices are also set to rise for clothes, coffee and more.”
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/08/20/beef-inflation-drought-tariffs-brazil/