Tesco Introduce slave labour

Some Sainsburys have them too. They are complicated and seem to need a supervisor but could ultimately replace most staffed checkouts.

They are slower than staffed checkouts because customers don't know how to use them and don't know where to find the barcodes on items. And errors can go both ways. Wonder how the fraud rate compares to staffed checkouts. One of the most common types of fraud involves the checkout operator failing to scan certain items for their friends and family. Maybe the saving in staff costs makes up for any additional fraud by customers.

They are only 2 out of about 10 checkouts though and it's definitely less hassle when you've just got a few things and everyone else has a trolley load. They display the list of items and total on the screen as you scan everything so you can see exactly what it's charging you.

Personally, I'm glad people think that they're complicated and dangerous as it means I don't have to queue.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-szBIrEtzs

I really don't understand the point of complaining about this. I think these machines are a good thing- you can make your own "special offers" - buy one item, oops didn't scan the next one properly so get it free! etc etc

More seriously though, I can't see any real health hazard, at least nothing more dangerous than crossing the carpark to get to tesco in the first place...? I really don't see this is anything all that concerning and we certainly shouldn't be calling it slave labour- try telling that to the kids that work their fingers to the bone in sweatshops for no money. And here we complain that we have to pass a loaf of bread over a barcode and into a plastic bag and call it slave labor, unpaid work etc? I don't think so...

The claim that it is "slave labour" for a shopper to swipe a few of their items across a bar-code, is, as others have pointed out deeply tasteless, when real slave labour still exists and workers employed in factories in Bangladesh subcontracted to Tescos are being exploited.

There are questions to be asked about whether the electronic systems are killing off British jobs. But, given how low-paid, mechanistic, low-status and dead-end those jobs, they may not be the best jobs to be fighting for.

Take the number of checkouts in Tescos countrywide. Multiply by the minimum wage. Multiply by eight for the hours in a day and 365.25 for the average days in a year.
That is how much Tesco will, nominally, save.

Thats 2215 stores in the UK. Lets say an average of ten checkouts. per store. (280,373 Staff you know). So that would be 2215 x 10 x 8 x 5.52 x 365.25 = £3,572,670.96

How trivial is that?

It also falls outside of Tesco's Corporate Governance Policy. That Tesco itself decided upon.

That money is paid for by consumers. Every penny in Tescos pocket comes from a consumer. So, really, how trivial is that? Do you have getting on for four million to squander?

I don't think this issue has anything to do with Health and Safety - and similarly it sure isn't slave labour to get customers to scan their own products. Of course the move is to save money and ultimately to increase Tesco's profits.

Personally I am not too keen on the machines as they are designed to reduce employment. One could say however they generate employment elsewhere - in the technical/knowledge sector. However if we agree that there will always be a need for manual and non-intellectual jobs then the introduction of these machines reduces that kind of employment. On that basis I tend to queue and explain to staff who suggest I use a machine that I am helping them keep their job :o)

I don't get annoyed with them though, even if one or two look at me like I have two green heads. It is worth bearing in mind that they are obliged by Tesco (certainly my one anyway) to encourage customers to use the machines.

It highlights that Tesco have internalised a slave labour model of business.

I agree that Developing World Slave Labour should not be trivialised. A commitment to human dignity is not something you can reserve for "worthy" causes. Dignity is something people deserve regardless of place in the world.

In claiming that Tesco are utilising Slave Labour in the UK it highlights their commitment to zero workers rights and zero pay. It highlights that Tesco are commited to a particular way of behaving. It is hugely offensive but it is not trivialising. To use the word slavery was intentionally provocative: why should customers be compelled to take away jobs from employees? That creates the conditions in which slave labour can flourish. It is not simply about people being enslaved but also about the social and economic conditions that sustain slavery. Perhaps a better word might have been "enslaving" but that simply detracts from the central point.

Others have pointed out that it creates an opportunity for creating discounts. That begs the question of why should people be stealing? Why should I be made responsible for any mistakes that machine makes - and they will make mistakes? Tesco are using machines that fundamentally shift the relationship between buyer and seller. That creates conditions of enslavement.

Just as you might not object to the phrase "wage slave." Now consider using the phrase "consumer slave." It is not about hurt feeling or trivialising. It is about a genuine erosion of cunsumer rights.

A tesco store that's only open 8 hrs a day? I've never heard of such a thing. 24hr signs are outside all of the tescos I've ever been to... Obviously not all the checkouts are in use in the middle of the night, but we can be pretty sure they're saving more than 3 million.

Clearly people should boycott these machines. By using them and getting into the habit of using them you are ultimately going to be eventually helping Tesco to reduce their staff and do workers out of a job.

Stop using them. And if the queues to get a real operator are too long, demand that they employ more people and put more staff on the tills!

So for the 24 hour operations we would need to multiply the £3.5m by three. Then we would need to double it. Because, as the CBI is so frequently claiming, the overheads on paying workers double the wage.

So I was wrong. Tesco would be saving nearer to £14m. Which comes out of consumer pockets.

You went to a grocer's shop and stood at the counter and asked for half a pound of butter and a pound of bacon, and the assistant went and fetched each of them.

Then these newfangled supermarkets came along, and people [shock! horror!] had to fetch thinigs for themselves. Slave labour!!

And I remember when a little man at the petrol station came and filled your tank for you. Now you have to do it yourself. SLAVE LABOUR, that's what I say.

Why are you shopping in Tesco anyway?

Slavery requires that you are forced to do something. You don't have to shop at Tescos if you feel you're so malcoordinated you might zap your eye out with a barcode scanner. Calling it slavery is not a clever bit of attention grabbing, it's just crass. If you want to read about modern slavery linked to Tesco's, I'd recommend the reports by War on Want on the textiles industry.

As for the "it's all going to come out of consumers' pockets" claim - you seem to have your economics backwards.

If Tesco's can pay fewer people and lower their overheads it is going to mean they can compete more with other supermarkets and sell their products at a lower price. Which means consumers spending *less* money.

It's the same reason Amazon sells DVDs cheaper than HMV, or Lovefilm is cheaper than Blockbuster. The organisations with fewer staff to pay, and more mechanised processes, can afford to provide stuff to consumers more cheaply.

The consumers will benefit. The taxpayers, on the other hand, may lose out if they have to pay to support those made redundant by Tescos. It may affect you as a taxpayer, but it may make things better for you as a consumer.

What will the situation be when a condition of shopping at Tescos becomes that the consumer uses these machines for no compensation?

I am malcoordinated and make no excuse for that. As are a large number of elderly people and people attempting to manage small children at the same time as using a machine who are equally malcoordinated.

I make no apology for crass attentiong grabbing. You seem to miss the point: slavery does not stop at the Bangladeshi Textile workers (or the Chinese Cockle Pickers for that matter) it becomes a fundamental business strategy. Stop concentrating on the word "Slavery" and start concentrating on what is being described. The non-consensual activities Tesco obliges customers to do are all forms of slavery. As such, expecting me to tug my forelock and apologise for not being as praiseworthy a slave as some other slave (regardless of who or where) is equally crass. You suggest that being crass somehow detracts from the point yet give no explanation as to why. If you want to concentrate on the single issue of Bangladeshi Textile workers, please do. They, and I, will thank you for it.

Tesco is a retailer. it makes money from consumers. If they both reduce costs (by introducing these machines) and increase profits, there is only one place the money has come from: customers. The economic description is not wrong. It does not mean that prices will fall. It means that prices can fall. If Tesco were to reduce proftits to zero they could reduce prices to cost. To suggest they might do that is as much mistaken as suggesting I consented to operate the scanner. There is a huge myth about lowering staff costs. It is an easy target because it comes out of the current quarters accounts. So it looks good. Invariably it will require casual staff to fill in from agencies. These people appear on the accounts as a service purchased in. So, there is no genuine reduction. And the Consumer gets tricked into working for nothing. paying for the privilege. At the same time, the service bought in can be used to reduce the corporate tax bill.

The consumer is the taxpayer. Tesco might well be guilty of causing tax rises by this strategy - which chimes into the claims I made about it being a business model that is increasingly reliant on enslavement. The tax burden being transferred to the Public from Tesco is, in effect, a systematic application of the same strategy as they apply in dealing with Bangladeshi Textile workers, English Dairy Farmers and anybody else they come into contact with.

The economics of it are simple: Tesco gets paid to casualise staff; Tesco gets free checkout staff and, if anything goes wrong with the process Tesco can prosecute their free labour for theft.

It is not the technology I object to, it is the use of the technology.

amazon and lovefilm have a very labour intensive stage of their supply process - the work of putting dvd's through your letterbox is outsourced to Royal Mail

I think a similar thing happened yesterday when Legolander compared "illegal migrants" to the holocaust. People retort immediately that the terminology is wrong & in so doing denigrate the kernal of the idea. Now "tesco unemployed" (whose last comment I really appreciated) argues that Tesco introduces "slave labour".

I agree but for different reasons which I'll outline briefly in the hope that we can all agree that Tesco is bad, slavery is real & we are so insensate to its reality and universality that we hide it behind shock headlines like "chinese periwinkle collectors".

If you walk down the aisles and naves of the largest retail corporations' cathedrals of consumerism, be they Walmart, Tesco, Carrefour or LIDL you will not only see refined social engineering which every shelf's product display & sellection needs to justify its inclusion - you will surely observe the paucity of fair trade options. Perhaps because the "fair trade" products have been placed just where your pricked conscience might best be expected to choose them & "afford" their extra expense.

The moment you enter Tesco as any largescale retailer (who are also amongst the largest employers in the Western World) you are introduced to slave labour, bonded labour, thralldom, serf farming, indentured production which is the largest employment system of the Third world whose farms and mines produce the fruit, coffee, tea, cocoa, sugar and chemicals which wash our clothes so white. We are so desensitized to the realities of food and consumer good arw material production that we forget how we were introduced to such slavery in the first place. If you can't remember squirming in a supermarket trolley toddler's seat as an infant and pointing spellbound as your mind learnt to recognise brandlogos and the semiotics of capitalism before you could even tell right from wrong or do long division sums - then maybe what you need to do is find yourself a thirdworlder fresh over the border of fortress Europe and bring them to their first supermarket.

Nobody likes remembering their first introduction to slavery.

Tesco allow the general public in China to buy live turtles and take them home to kill in any old way they like, This is a totaly unethical company who care about profit above any ethical standards:

> The Alliance for Animal Rights (AFAR) supports Care for the Wilds campaign
> opposing Tescos turtle sales.
> We urge our supporters to Boycott Tesco shops..
> CWI investigators who visited 32 Chinese Tesco stores in April and May
> discovered that staff do not adhere to Tesco's new slaughter policies. In
> 12 stores where CWI witnessed slaughter firsthand, staff continued to kill
> turtles by decapitation alone or by evisceration. CWI also found large
> numbers of disembowelled turtles with intact heads for sale.
>
> In a Tesco store in China's Guangdong Province, CWI observed how staff
> caught a turtle and started to cut its head. "The turtle pulled back into
> the shell," says Dr Maas, "so staff cut the shell along the edge. The
> turtle broke loose and was caught again after about a minute. Staff then
> sliced the still living turtle in half, separating the upper and lower
> part of its shell. In another scene, Tesco staff cut the turtle's abdomen
> from tail to neck with a pair of scissors. The turtle extended its long
> neck and its extremities struggled. Tesco staff then added a traverse
> incision and pulled out the entrails." CWI also saw Tesco staff skinning
> bullfrogs alive. "This unacceptable and can not be considered humane under
> any circumstances."
>
> Bound up tightly in plastic netting, live turtles are mostly displayed on
> ice, which is inappropriate and causes pain. CWI says that although Tesco
> acknowledged this fact a year ago, the practice continues.
>
> Please highlight this issue and Boycott Tesco stores until these
> cruel practises are ended.
>

This is Tesco's reply:
. While we are committed to upholding the very important issue of animal welfare, we also need to balance different cultural attitudes, in this case respecting the different traditions, expectations and values on this issue that exists in China.

Turtles are a popular and traditional part of the Chinese diet and having addressed some important animal welfare concerns, we currently continue to sell live turtles in our stores in China.

So culture and diet, aTesco excuse for barbarity!!






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It is a wonder ALF leave supermarkets alone so much. Maybe they boycott them for consistency's sake..,

At the cafeteria at work I have to take my own plate to the table on my own instead of having someone bring it to me. I even have to scoop the food onto it myself. ZOMG TEH SLAVERY! MAN THE BARRICADES!

There are problems with the introduction of these machines - in particular that it is a transparent attempt to lower employee costs by replacing labour with machinery (see also: the industrial revolution and a number of advancements thereafter.) But to call it "slavery" is utterly pathetic. It isn't. At all.

for fuck's sake, do you think having to push your own trolley is slave labour too?

There are real concerns here and the kind of frothing hysteria shown in this post is counterproductive to say the least.

Grow up.

Unemployee of Tesco has highlighted a situation that society is sleep-walking
into, although we have been here before. The advance of automation and self-service into
banking (ATM's from the 70's onwards) springs to mind. As does self-connected, rather than operator connected telephony (circa 1930 onwards?)

There are obvious parallels here between the Luddites recognition
that the machinary being introduced to make things better were
really there to serve the capitalists and the capitalist system,
and would ultimately put them out of a job.

The advance of these machines isn't limited to Tesco.

Boots are introducing them now too. They have been in Asda now for the past year
or so.

If their introduction goes unchallenged, more and more normal check-outs will be converted to the robot ones. And supermarket staff numbers will steadily reduced to shelf-stackers and a small team of supervisors there to 'help' with "incorrect item detected" errors.

Question is will the buying public and those whose jobs are at rest, have the gumption to do anything about it?

Still, you've got to larf haven't you

Quite a number of comments boil down to this: "we know tesco are bad capitalists, so what" and "you are not as badly off as you say you are."

That might well be true, I might well exaggerate the misery of the world. But that does not make my complaint fundamentally untrue.

Checkout Jobs currently exist. Tesco see fit to pay people to do those jobs. At the time I was compelled to use these machines there were no human operated checkouts. So the labout was non consensual. The labour was unpaid.

Had that not happened I might well have ignored them.

Since it did happen, it became very clear to me that I was being used as unpaid labour. I even have a job that I can compare my activities to. Because that job still exists for the vast majority of supermarkets. The point that the job still exists but that it will, in future, be unpaid and non consensual seems to be something that is being missed. I am aware of the ideological arguments. The point of the post was not on any grand scale of theory but of the practicality of a situation. There is blatant misappropriation of my labour and I object.

First, the labour is not consensual; second there are genuine concerns about health and safety that Tesco are not informing the Public about. These are points that some people have chosen to consider as serious and others to consider as pointless whining.

There is a third factor. Reliablity. The machines make mistakes frequently. Manufacturers figures show that they are five times slower than a trained operator: five seconds per item according to IBM as opposed to one second per item for a trained operator on a conventional till. The machines are sensitive to location and correct use of the weight mechanism to give correct pricings.The imperfections of engineering translate into obligations for the public. As they are precision weighing machines they require expert calibration in order to operate correctly - again a fault that is passed on to the consumer who will be told "caveat emptor" for every problem they raise regarding these machines.

The obligation for the transaction being correct is with a member of the public. This makes consumers responsible for machines they do not own, are obliged to operate and have no control over the decisions it makes. Even if you object to the term "slavery" - for whatever reason - that is a fundamentally unfair situation. Tesco are obliging you to enter into an unpaid contract of work in order to purchase from them.

Fundamentally, this is different to an ATM or a Cafeteria line. An ATM is very tightly controlled, requiring you to give a password (PIN Number) prior to the transaction. If you get the password correct and have the correct card for that account the bank gives you your money. Those systems are not without problems but those problems are tiny compared to the variety of problems these machines create.

These checkout machines wait until the end for a password. That makes the whole process fundamentally different. The user is obliged to correctly clerk through goods - if they are incorrectly priced or misscan then they are obliged to correct that problem. You are obliged to give them money without any guarantee that they will complete the transaction correctly. You are not permitted to reverse a transaction if you decide not to purchase an item.

Banks have known for years about phantom withdrawals. Tesco now have a machine for phantom deposits. The entire process is a good deal different to self service of any previous kind. What is being done is the unpaid outsourcing of checkout activities to untrained people.
And, yes that is a matter for frothing hysteria. If I went and took items from the shelves of Tescos, walked out saying, I will pay for these some other time, I would find myself in court accused of theft - no matter how sincere my pledge to pay later.

My final question is: how much do you value your time at? Do you actually value your own labour enough to say to Tesco, I refuse to do this work?

Since I shall never be shopping at Tesco again it has ceased to be an immediate practical issue for me. However, it is only a matter of time before it becomes the same issue at some other shop. That remains a fundamental concern.

I think this is a great article and your points are very good and it's been quite heartwarming to read how the users of and contributors to IMC UK can exchange the time of day, polite words, mundane little complaints about consumerism, trivia about turtles, rants about slavery, sentimentality for now bygone days and ways -

I studied checkout operation and cashier operation at Cambridge for two years before finally deciding my university career was misdirected and really quite luckily being accepted at the woodwork and metal welding faculty. I never looked back. But my point is, I've known many people who have continued in the sector who are indeed quite rucking radge that Tesco is usurping their skills.

"Since it did happen, it became very clear to me that I was being used as unpaid labour. I even have a job that I can compare my activities to. Because that job still exists for the vast majority of supermarkets. The point that the job still exists but that it will, in future, be unpaid and non consensual seems to be something that is being missed. I am aware of the ideological arguments. The point of the post was not on any grand scale of theory but of the practicality of a situation. There is blatant misappropriation of my labour and I object."

Chucking a few groceries in a bag is a "blatant misappropriation of your labour"? Oh, you poor dear.

If your bus route closes down are you being forced into slavery by being made to walk everywhere?

There are people - home shopping assistants, for example - who are paid to walk around supermarkets with a trolley. Do you feel you are being exploited when "forced" to push your own trolley?

There are people - waiters, for example - who are paid to bring food to your table. Do you feel your labour is being grossly misappropriated if a cafe needs you to carry your own tray?

The self-service machines can be annoying, and the concerns over the inevitable layoffs are legitimate, but your post comes across as little more than frothing hysteria over what is, to the consumer, a trivial inconvenience.

I find it quite telling that you have little concern for the people who are out of a job due to these machines, caring only for the poor, violated, exploiter consumer who - OH NOES - is being forced to scan stuff for themselves.

Good to know that the lovely 'Tinkerbell' thinks that unconrtolled, unethical home slaughtering of live turtles in China by Tesco is 'trivia', may he/she reap what they sow!

Rasputin,

Currently Tesco pay people to clerk items at checkouts. Thererfore a legitimate paid task exists. By transferring that task to a consumer - even a whining frothing hysteric like me - that job ceases to exist.

Except the job does not exist. I am doing it. The consumer is being made complicit in the transfer of other people's jobs - not the destruction of them. These machines are not automatic, they require human labour to operate. If Tesco transfer that work to the consumer without compensation they have not destroyed a job.

So, the economics of it is that the consumer has their labour misappropriated - because the physical labour has not disappeared. Where exactly has the labour been misapropriated from? Quite obviously from the Tesco Employee and the Consumer. Tough luck. I have to defend my rights to not have my labour misappropriated if Tesco Employees are to have their rights defended. Its fine to say I should support the Tesco employee - and I should. But the interests of the Tesco Employee are served by the consumer refusing to use these machines.

They are not automated and so, given that effort is not being destroyed by their introduction, it is the common interest that is served by consumer and employee objecting to these machines. Even if it takes frothing hysterics to articulate that.

It is far more telling that you have not mentioned that the Tesco Employees are currently in the process of losing overtime and bonuses because these machines are available after 10pm. If you were really making a reasoned argument about my mendacity then you might actually point out such things.

You might also point out that the machines, as operated by the public, fail to scan 20% of tems correctly. That they have a service cycle of five seconds per item rather than the one second per item achieved by check out staff. That they are weighing machines and so are sensitive to location, passing trucks and a whole range of other environmental factors for accurate operation.

You also fail to mention that Tesco Staff also shop at Tesco. Employees that are consumers might actually be a new idea, but I doubt it. The interests of the consumer and the employee are the same. It makes the ex employees into frothing hysterics.

Why is my attitude "telling"? Because I complain in an articulate and reasonably lucid manner? I am "Hysterical" because I object to being used without my permission? Because I do not spring to the defence of others as a reflex?

Your attitude is telling because it insists that it is wrong to value manual labour. As I pointed out earlier, it is not the machine but the use of the machine that I object to. It is not your argument that I am a selfish git (I am) but the use that argument is being put to. It marginalises both the Tesco Employee and the Tesco Consumer. That kind of reflex divide and rule argument is exactly why these machines are in place in the first place: not enough frothing hysterics.

Given how often items are the wrong weight, I wonder whether I'm buying goods that are underweight ? It would be cynical to suggest it's more likely underweight than overweight - could be fun to involve Trading Standards ? Perhaps the display should show the target weight and the measured weight ? Perhaps I should take my own scales when shopping ?