Usually, my wife does the food shopping, and I have not been in a supermarket for several years. Tonight however, I took on the chore and went to a local Acme Markets store located in an affluent suburb of Philadelphia. I arrived at about 8:00 p.m. I was prepared to experience "sticker shock" even in these hard economic times, but I did not expect to find that there was only one human checkout cashier, and only a few other employees filling shelves. The last time I shopped here, there were 10 aisles of checkout cashiers, but now there was only one lane with a long line of elderly people (who were, I assume, not adept at using new technological advances) waiting for the human cashier. All of the other shoppers were standing in shorter lines to do self-checkout at computer terminals. (The lines were not moving very fast, but they were shorter than the lane with the human cashier due to the large number of automated checkout terminals.) In other words, Acme Markets, which is a component of a mega grocery chain that has its lobbyists get breaks for it from Congress under the guise of being a "job creator" is in reality, a craven job destroyer that imposes on its customers the inconvenience of having to self-scan purchases, deal with scanning misfires and computer glitches, and also do their own bagging-but these customers get no discount on the prices they pay for self-checkout instead of cashier checkout. (In the old days, gas stations at least gave you a few pennies off of your price per gallon if you eschewed full service and used self service.)
However, we have the power to restore those supermarket jobs in a manner of a few weeks if we act as a community; and we also have the power to do the same thing for jobs in other industries that serve consumers.
See what I mean, below the squiggly thing:
Defining the Issue:
Many years ago, while checking a large shopping cart at another supermarket that provided customers with both a cashier and a "bagger" at the register, I started to help the bagger put my purchases in the shopping bags out of spirit of being a good guy who wanted to help out what I thought was a beleaguered bagger. The man was in his forties (I was a kid in my twenties), and he asked me nicely if I was helping to bag because I was in a rush. I replied that I was not, but rather, I was putting some of my purchases in bags only to help lighten his load. He responded with a knowing smile that the company could have lightened his load by allowing for a little more counter space, more efficiently designed bags and other things his union had been asking for, but the company actually wanted to train shoppers to do their own bagging so his job could be eliminated leaving just the cashier and the shopper to do his work. They did this by putting bag bins in reach of the shoppers, and providing such cramped counters that the purchases would appear to fill up the space faster than the bagger could keep up. I became sensitized immediately, and of course, stopped "helping him". Alas, a few years later, the baggers were all but gone.
Fast forward to 2012, and not only is the bagger history, the job of the cashier is about to also become extinct. As the lone human Acme Markets cashier rang me up tonight, I asked her what happened to her erstwhile co-workers, and she told me that Acme Markets got rid of thousands of jobs in a 3 year period. This meant the local union had so few members, it had to take drastic steps to stay alive.
Calculating the consequences:
So let us look at the results of the Acme Markets switch to automated checkout:
1. No savings are passed on to shoppers: Prices are just as high, and the shopper is not sharing in Acme Market's reduced labor costs.
2. Checkout is less efficient and time consuming:The time for checking out is increased for each shopper since the automated checkout system frequently tells the shopper that some unidentified object (i.e., something the scanner did not record correctly or at all) must be rescanned-which requires the shopper to search for that item, or start over-which is a disaster if the message comes after the shopper had almost emptied a large cart- or the computer freezes up, and the shopper's work to that point is lost. Meanwhile, those in line must continue to wait their turn. Over at the single live cashier, the lines are always deep, an artificial condition created by having only one lane with a live cashier.
3. Unemployment is increased in the neighborhood.
4. Unions are weakened, and their political clout to help the Democratic Party is diminished.
WHAT WE SHOPPERS CAN DO TO INCREASE EMPLOYMENT:
Our neighbors and fellow citizens have lost their jobs, but with a little effort and a willingness to be inconvenienced for a few weeks, we can get these jobs back. If a critical mass of shoppers refused to use the automated system for checking out, and instead stood in a line waiting to go through the checkout lane manned by the lone live cashier, the line would eventually snake around the store and block shoppers still putting things in their cart. The revenue from the store would drop quickly, and a message would be sent to corporate headquarters.
Yes, a 20 minute trip to the supermarket could be expanded to an hour or more. But you would be donating time to a worthy cause, and in the long run, you would benefit by helping the economy recapture jobs. Moreover, since the arrogant supermarket chain has not passed on any savings to you from its switch to automatic checkout, it should have no credibility if it warned you that prices would go up if you insisted in helping the cashiers get their jobs back. The best thing is that you would be sending a message that the community of consumers would be willing to be inconvenienced, and would disprove the bet the companies made that we would always act selfishly if we banded together for this tiny rebellion against efforts to slash jobs for the sake of cost cutting that provide no improvement in service or prices to the consumer.
You may also have a self-interest in helping your neighbors to regain their jobs. The place where you or your family members work may be thinking about implementing a tactic or system that is similar to the supermarket auto-checkout terminals that will eliminate jobs for you and your kin. Wouldn't you like to have an army of consumers rallying to save the jobs that mean something to you? We have to start some place if we expect to assert our community values. Even if you must volunteer to be your brother's keeper first, he may be there to get your back the next time. As Martin-Niemöller's much quoted poem about the Nazi criminals teaches us:
First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.