Greedy, clueless grocery store union attacks Amazon Go

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union’s (UFCW) attack on Amazon’s new automated grocery store — Amazon Go — is as transparent as it is desperate and greedy.

This week we learned that Amazon is opening a grocery store with astonishing new technology. Amazon Go shoppers use the Amazon Go app when they enter the store — scanning a QR code as they walk in. Everything a shopper picks up is automatically added to their virtual cart. When the shopper leaves, they are automatically charged for the items in their bag.

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Understandably, grocery store workers fear this technology will put them out of a job when implemented widely. They’re right. Technological progress often leads to replacing human jobs. The computers don’t make mistakes, don’t take time off, don’t get sick, go on vacations or complain about the crappy coffee in the break room.

“Amazon believes that America’s hard-working men and women are irrelevant to customers — they couldn’t be more wrong,” Marc Perrone, international president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) said in a statement released Tuesday, according to the Seattle Times.

“Amazon is masking its blind greed as progress,” he said. “This is not about improving customer experience: it’s about destroying good jobs, with no regard to the families and communities impacted. This is not the America that hard-working families want and deserve.”

If Amazon Go is wrong, why is UFCW so worried? This would fail and never be widely implemented. But the truth is, Amazon isn’t wrong. Virtually no one yearns for a time where our already busy lives are occupied by a random cashier talking to us about the news or the day or their personal lives. A social media-driven world already gives us access to curated strangers for us to talk to. When we’re in the grocery store, we just want to buy our food and go.

Amazon isn’t masking blind greed as progress. It’s the UFCW masking their greed at the expense of progress. Grocers who lose their jobs can’t afford to pay their dues that give Perrone his salary. But beyond that, UFCW and too many other unions, fail to actually help low-skilled workers get better skills, which lead to be better jobs with higher paying salaries. That would be too hard. So, instead, they demonize companies that develop life-changing technology that make our lives easier and better.

Imagine a world in which Luddites got their way. While I’m sad that people working in the rail industry lost many of their jobs, I’m glad we have airplanes to fly us to our vacation destinations. As much as I’d love to see that accountant have a steady job, I’m grateful I can do my taxes online with software. And as sad as I am to see a 19-year-old kid lose their job at Blockbuster, I’m happier streaming Netflix and Hulu.

We don’t — and shouldn’t — stop technological progress to help people keep low-skilled jobs that virtually anyone can do. Instead, we should embrace the technology and help teach these workers better skills so that they can earn better, higher paying jobs.

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