CITY HALL, Manhattan (PIX11) — The New York City council is considering a bill that would change self-checkout at grocery stores and pharmacies.
It would require stores with self-checkout to ring up no more than 15 items, and require plenty of employees to be on hand to help customers who run into issues with the machines.
Amanda Farias has proposed the regulation, which would ensure any store with self-checkout kiosks has one employee manning every three kiosks available– to preserve retail jobs and help customers.
“This is just to help address some of the real problems we’re seeing in our communities,” Farias said.
She also believes this will help curb retail theft.
“The most common sense part of this is more workers on the floor means more eyes, which is a deterrent for people many thinking about theft,” Farias said.
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As for concerns about the increased cost of labor driving up the costs of necessary goods–
“What we’ve seen is the complete opposite of that,” the Councilmember contends. “Less workers means more retail theft, which increases the price of commodities people are buying… we’re seeing this with Target rolling back self-checkout kiosks, and we’re seeing this in other states where this is being implemented.”
This proposal to regulate self-checkout still has to go through the full city council process.
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