Long Beach is looking into whether it should penalize grocers and drug stores that don’t staff a minimum number of employees at their self-checkout lanes.
In a 7-2 vote, the City Council agreed Tuesday to have city staff study the idea and come back in 60 days with information about how such a rule would affect local businesses and shoppers.
The proposal, assembled by three council offices, argued that supermarkets and retail food sellers over a certain size should never have a lone employee supervising more than two self-checkout lanes at a time.
They also recommended requiring stores to always keep at least one non-self-service checkout lane open and limit self-checkout lanes to no more than 15 items per customer.
If stores fail to meet staffing requirements, the council members proposed fines of up to $2,500 for each violation.
The idea was proposed by Councilmembers Tunua Thrash-Ntuk, Mary Zendejas and Roberto Uranga — whose districts include neighborhoods in North, Downtown and West Long Beach — who lauded the vote as a victory for workers they said are routinely undermanned at supermarkets across Long Beach.
Without adequate staffing, several grocery workers in the audience said they are often harassed or threatened, most often when they are alone or without a nearby coworker. With more workers, they said, shoplifters would also be deterred.
“More staff in our stores is the best deterrent we have left for theft and making our stores safer,” said Linda Molina, a union steward at a Ralphs in Long Beach.
Locally, there was a 16% increase in petty thefts citywide from 2023 to 2024, according to the Long Beach Police Department.
Union officials with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 324 say this is exacerbated by self-checkout areas where workers are expected to monitor 4 to 10 machines at a time, sometimes “at opposite ends of a store,” according to the council members’ proposal. They cited a 2022 international study that found self-checkout accounts for nearly a quarter of retail losses globally.
But the strategy was poorly received by store management and trade lobbyists who said Tuesday that staffing more employees won’t deter theft and only lead to higher grocery prices.
The Long Beach Chamber of Commerce said it would hamper businesses already struggling to compete against e-commerce companies. And the California Grocers Association said it would saddle storefronts with overstaffed checkout stations and lead to higher prices.
“If you want to talk about staffing we can absolutely talk about staffing,” said Celeste Wilson with the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce. “But all this item does is unfairly penalize businesses that are using technology to stay competitive, and this approach is a thinly veiled attempt to pass a staffing mandate while doing nothing to actually address public safety.”
Councilwoman Kristina Duggan, who voted against the idea, said such an ordinance would inappropriately burden businesses and workers.
“It isn’t the responsibility of our retail employees to reduce crime,” Duggan said. “We are inappropriately shifting the blame away from the people stealing and putting the blame on our business community for not taking appropriate preventative measures … measures that are not needed in other states or even neighboring cities.”
Citing a 2024 national study from the National Retail Federation, Duggan added that methods such as cables, locks and hiring loss-prevention officers, are more effective measures to address the issue.
This comes as Long Beach — and California — have seen a rise in “smash and grab” thefts and shoplifting.
Petty thefts citywide declined from 2017 to 2022 but rose in 2023 and 2024, alongside commercial burglaries. Videos and reports of people smashing windows, stealing lockboxes and wheeling out shopping carts full of food are frequently passed around online, raising the specter of the problem.
At the state level, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has already increased the budget of the California Highway Patrol’s Organized Retail Theft task force while California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has held camera-friendly press conferences with retailers, online marketplace companies and law enforcement to brainstorm solutions. The state is also still ironing out its launch of Proposition 36, a voter-approved initiative that increases penalties for repeat offenders of theft crimes or drug possession.
The Long Beach City Prosecutor has also sought to crack down on habitual shoplifters — in one case, charging a woman who stole from the same store dozens of times.