New technology is not just making shopping more challenging for workers and consumers—it’s poised to rip off the most vulnerable.
Kroger groceries are pioneering techniques to bleed shoppers dry.(Jeffery Washington / Getty)
Brianna Bagley’s favorite hobby is playing Horizon Zero Dawn, a role-playing game featuring a young hunter who battles murderous robotic organisms on a postapocalyptic planet overrun by machines. When she isn’t leveling up in the game, Bagley is hard at work in the produce department of a chain supermarket in Salt Lake City, Utah. Seven years in the grocery industry has given her plenty of experience with the real-world technology that is automating stores.
During the pandemic, Bagley earned about $15 per hour in a supermarket e-commerce department dedicated to filling online orders and preparing them for delivery. The department was unable to fill the flood of orders that came in each day. Managers pulled employees from other parts of the store to double the department’s staff—but only about half were actually employed in the e-commerce department. The rest were cashiers, baggers, and others conscripted into emergency service. Bagley was grateful for the help, but recognized that it came at others’ expense. “It was harder for those departments to provide customer service with fewer employees,” the 26-year-old said.
Bagley’s experience is of a piece with the broader trend in retail toward automation and other technological shortcuts. From self-checkout machines to payment by app, technology is rapidly changing the way we buy groceries. Progressive members of Congress are sounding the alarm: Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and 13 colleagues wrote to the CEO of the supermarket behemoth Kroger in November about electronic price tags (often called electronic shelf labels or ESLs). These digital displays allow companies to change prices automatically from a mobile app. Tlaib warned that this so-called “dynamic pricing” permits retailers to adjust prices based on their whims. Just as Uber raises prices during storms or rush hour, retailers like Kroger use ESLs to adjust prices based on factors like time of day or the weather. Supermarkets could conceivably mine a shopper’s personal data to set prices as high as possible. “My concern is that these tools will be abused in the pursuit of profit, surging prices on essential goods in areas with fewer and fewer grocery stores,” Tlaib wrote.
In August, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bob Casey wrote to Kroger raising similar concerns about price gouging. Noting that the company has already implemented the technology in hundreds of stores across the county, they warned that “ESLs may help Kroger extract maximum profits from consumers at a time when…high grocery prices are a leading concern among Americans who are concerned about inflation.”
Warren and Casey also voiced concern about Kroger’s partnership with Microsoft to install facial-recognition technology in stores, which could be used to identify individual customers: When a shopper approaches the shelf, she would see a price calibrated specifically for her. The next shopper might pay a different amount based on their profile. Retailers could use shopper data to charge higher prices to those who can afford to pay more, but since stores do not have to disclose who is making pricing decisions or why, the senators worry that shoppers on a budget are particularly vulnerable. “It is outrageous that, as families continue to struggle to pay to put food on the table, grocery giants like Kroger continue to roll out surge pricing and other corporate profiteering schemes,” they wrote.
It’s unclear whether Kroger will respond to the lawmakers. The company ignored a prior letter from Representative Tlaib and previously dismissed concerns about ESLs, saying that the negative effects of the technology have been exaggerated. Meanwhile, other chains are moving swiftly to install dynamic pricing technology. Walmart plans to install the tags in 2,300 stores by 2026. The nation’s largest retailer emphasized the benefit to shoppers: “This efficiency means we can spend more time assisting customers.”
The experiences of workers cast doubt on such claims. I spoke to William Knight, a 10-year veteran of the grocery industry who spends their off hours crafting cyberpunk stories inspired by the novel Neuromancer. (Knight’s latest is a dystopian tale about an America ruled by just three corporations.) On the job, the 31-year-old has often found themselves on the other side of the crisis that Bagley described. Working as a cashier and maintenance person in a Utah chain, Knight was regularly conscripted to work in e-commerce, which put them behind on their official duties. “I’m not necessarily against [automation], but a new technology should be regulated. It’s too young to be pushed to everyone and should stay in Silicon Valley,” they said.
Bagley’s and Knight’s experiences sounded familiar. I vowed never to buy groceries online after working as a cashier supervisor in a supermarket during the pandemic. One day, a panicked manager approached. “We don’t have enough staff in e-commerce,” she said. “I’m going to borrow a cashier or two.” “Borrow” was the wrong word for what was about to happen: I would lose employees from my department. It would not be the last time. The consequences were longer lines at checkout and frustrated shoppers—a price that managers were willing to pay to shift resources usually spent to serve customers in the store to those who had ordered online.
Tom Olson knows firsthand that new technologies that promise efficiency in practice often shuffle tasks around, benefiting some and burdening others. The 14-year industry veteran is currently a union representative for UFCW 7 in southwest Denver. He regularly hears from workers who are moved to e-commerce. “If there is bad weather or a holiday, a lot of people are ordering online. The [staffing needs] in those departments have jumped dramatically, and they are pulling from a wide variety of departments.”
One result, Olson says, is that employees can’t keep up with their regular jobs. The frustration leads them to turn on each other. “It is causing a lot of anger in the store. It’s like a leaky boat and we need your finger to block the water. Now [workers] are doing double duty.”
Joe Mizrahi, the secretary treasurer of UFCW Local 3000 in Washington, echoed Olson’s concerns. Mizrahi says that workers’ experience shows that store automation is not delivering on its promises. He described the dysfunction that dynamic pricing bought to a Kroger outlet in Redmond, Wash. in 2019: “ESLs were constantly breaking so you would walk down the aisle and there would be duct tape with the price written on it because the digital pricing wasn’t working, and you couldn’t use it on shelves over a certain weight.”
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The malfunction forced employees to work harder to make it clear to shoppers what they would be charged at checkout. Mizrahi questioned the logic of retailers spending money on glitchy technology that doesn’t improve service. “That money could have gone into making workers’ and customers’ experience better,” he said.
Technology that functions as intended may still be cause for concern. Tom Geiger is the special projects director of Local 3000 in Washington. He told The Nation that employees at Fred Meyer (a chain owned by Kroger) have complained about electronic labels heating up stores. “These digital strips that relay this information, they literally emit heat that makes the stores warmer than it would be otherwise.” Geiger cited the negative impact to people and the planet. “I don’t know how much energy that is using. Wouldn’t you want shoppers and workers to be comfortable? And how much is it costing?” He believes that the public deserves to know the real costs of store automation.
Automation may also have unintended social consequences. Pegah Moradi, a PhD candidate and researcher in Information Science at Cornell University, studies automation in retail. “When [an electronic shelf label] breaks down in the store,” she explained, “the worker has to repair the system even if they don’t have the technical expertise. The customer becomes frustrated: There is no price available, or why has the price changed? The burden falls on the employee to alleviate the tension of that situation.” The technology may put employees in the position of performing what Moradi calls “relationship management,” adding social pressure to service jobs but without additional pay or training.
Workers’ main fear is that jobs might disappear altogether. John Marshall, the capital strategies director for UFCW 3000, says it is already happening. He told The Nation that OSHA data shows that staffing hours at Kroger are down by 14 percent since before the pandemic. Marshall believes the company is already cutting the jobs that ESLs will automate away. The chain has added some additional e-commerce clerks to stores. But it is likely that cashiers, baggers, and others will continue to fill in the gaps. “Kroger is prioritizing e-commerce customers at the expense of in-store operations,” Marshall said.
Several people interviewed for this article stressed that they were not against all forms of automation but that the innovations should be put in context. They pointed to the pandemic, when retailers blamed price spikes on chaotic supply chains and higher production costs. But studies have uncovered a different culprit: A 2021 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City attributed 50 percent of pandemic-era price increases to profiteering. And in 2024, the Federal Trade Commission concluded that companies had “accelerated and distorted” supply chain problems to reap a windfall during the crisis. Joe Mizrahi believes that store automation may be another racket. Price gouging “is totally in line with what we have seen them do during the pandemic. They are increasing prices having nothing to do with inflation,” he said.
The gap between automation’s promise and workers’ experiences suggests that grocery employee and cyberpunk author William Knight is wise to urge increased regulatory scrutiny. Letters to Kroger from progressive lawmakers suggest a move in that direction. Another sign came last month when state and federal courts sided with the FTC to block a proposed merger between Kroger and Albertsons. Yet the Trump administration has signaled a more lax approach to regulation, while the grocery company Trader Joe’s has joined forces with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Amazon, and Starbucks to try to dismantle the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that protects workers’ right to organize.
Retail workers are navigating a brave new world. Brianna Bagley switched stores and no longer works in e-commerce. The supermarket veteran says she doesn’t miss the stress of not knowing how many orders will come in each day or if colleagues from other parts of the store will have to fill the gap. “It’s better when things are more predictable,” she said.
Bagley draws another lesson from her favorite video game. In Horizon Zero Dawn, the hunter discovers that her own mother had a role in creating the technology that launched an apocalypse. “She didn’t intend for the machines to get corrupted,” she said. “But now that it’s happened, the machines are killing people, and people have to fight back.”
Ann LarsonAnn Larson is a writer and activist focused on education, debt, and low-wage work. Her writing has appeared in The New Republic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and other publications.