{"id":186692,"date":"2026-02-20T22:47:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T22:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/186692\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T22:47:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T22:47:14","slug":"self-checkout-workers-now-required-in-an-orange-county-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/186692\/","title":{"rendered":"Self-Checkout Workers Now Required in an Orange County City"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another Southern California city is now requiring staffed self-checkout lanes to prevent retail theft <\/p>\n

The Costa Mesa City Council adopted a new ordinance this past week that requires at least one employee to monitor self-checkout lanes to help prevent theft and protect grocery clerk jobs. <\/p>\n

They adopted this ordinance just months after Long Beach had approved one similar to this past June.<\/a><\/p>\n

The proposal was backed by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. The measure was passed by a 5-2 majority vote on Tuesday. Beating the lesser vote, the council stated that theft could result in up to a $1,000 fine per day; \u201cSafe Stores are Staffed Stores.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCosta Mesa has a proud history of championing pro-worker and public safety initiatives, and by passing this ordinance, Costa Mesa will provide thousands of workers, union and non-union, with extra support and better service for customers,\u201d said Jose Perez, president of UFCW Local 324<\/a>, in a public statement. <\/p>\n

There is, however, a difference in staff ratio in Long Beach versus Costa Mesa. Long Beach requires one employee for every two kiosks, while Costa Mesa requires one for every three.<\/p>\n

About two dozen grocery and drug stores will have this new ordinance take full effect.<\/p>\n

However, a bill<\/a> proposed by California State Senator Lola Smallwood-Cuevas would like staffing to be a requirement at all self-checkouts, statewide.<\/p>\n

This has been naturally opposed by retailers as they believe that kiosks don\u2019t require a lot of oversight from staff. Since the city of Long Beach has adopted this ordinance, at least four grocery stores have reported that they\u2019d rather shut down self-checkout than staff it.<\/p>\n

Scroll to continue reading<\/p>\n

Council member Loren Gameros highlighted that doing this would help protect workers who are from working-class families and typically get overworked at grocery stores. <\/p>\n

Store managers and trade groups stated during a city council meeting that this would not meaningfully take away shoplifting. The meeting continued to escalate in emotion as they argued that the ordinance would help address overwhelming workloads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another Southern California city is now requiring staffed self-checkout lanes to prevent retail theft The Costa Mesa City…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[3372,55927,131,133,132,80454],"class_list":{"0":"post-186692","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-costa-mesa","9":"tag-grocery-stores","10":"tag-long-beach","11":"tag-long-beach-headlines","12":"tag-long-beach-news","13":"tag-united-food-and-commercial-workers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}