Throughout the state, families are stretching every dollar just to get by. Right now, corporations are using your personal data to figure out the highest price you’d be willing to pay, and then instantly changing the prices you see to charge you exactly that.
That is not how shopping is supposed to work. Two people standing in the same aisle, picking up the same carton of milk, should not be paying different prices because an algorithm used their personal data to decide that one of them could be squeezed for more. That is not innovation. It is exploitation.
And it is not some far-off possibility. It is happening now. Companies are bringing surveillance pricing to your phone, your favorite delivery website and even your neighborhood grocery store. Prices can change in real time, right in the app or on the shelf, as often as a company wants.
New Yorkers know this is wrong. Recent polling shows that 77% of New Yorkers support banning surveillance pricing, and 64% worry electronic shelf labels will cause their grocery bills to increase.
Delivery apps are supposed to make New Yorkers’ lives easier, and our store aisles cannot become places where working families are forced to play the odds on the price of milk, bread or eggs. That is why we must pass the two bills in New York’s One Fair Price Package.
The One Fair Price Act bans companies from using shoppers’ personal data to set individualized prices while still protecting the discounts that New Yorkers count on, like loyalty programs, coupons and promotions for groups of consumers like veterans and seniors.
The Protecting Consumers and Jobs from Discriminatory Pricing Act stops these predatory practices in grocery stores and pharmacies and limits the use of electronic shelf labels, which allow companies to change prices in-store so that two shoppers could be charged different prices for the same product. These electronic shelf labels threaten good union jobs, as they could eliminate the work of grocery clerks.
On top of hitting shoppers’ wallets, surveillance pricing crosses a line on privacy, turning their shopping habits, paycheck schedule and even personal communications into tools for corporate profit.
We have seen this playbook before. New technology rolls out fast, companies push the limits and working people are left to deal with the consequences. The answer is not to wait and see how bad it gets. The answer is to act now.
These bills are about securing basic fairness for New Yorkers. People should be able to walk into a grocery store or shop online without wondering if they are being singled out for a higher price. And they should not have to accept an economy where prices can change at any moment for reasons they will never see.
Our lawmakers now have an opportunity to stop this problem before it spreads. The fix is straightforward. Pass the One Fair Price Package, protect working families and keep good grocery jobs in our communities.
New Yorkers are not data points. They are people. And they do not need another surprise at the checkout counter.
Letitia James is attorney general of New York. Stuart Appelbaum is president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. Robert Newell is president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1500.