MODERN TIMES

Finnish Labor Museum, Tampere, Finland

June - November 2024

MODERN TIMES

My local supermarket, the Stop & Shop at South Bay, is an intimate tragedy of contemporary work. Stop & Shop is unique amongst regional chains; the workers are unionized. 31,000 Stop & Shop employees are members of the United Food and Commercial Workers. On April 11th, 2019, the UFCW went on strike for wages, health care premiums, and pension benefits. After 10 days, Stop & Shop acceded to the union’s demands, leading to a three-year worker-friendly contract.

In the four years since the strike, Stop & Shop has adopted both obvious and insidious automation. The more transparently calculated transformation is the installation of self-checkout machines. These self-checkout machines are terrible. They emit a cacophony of error beeps, failed scans, and illogical prompts. The most conspicuous introduction of automation is the robot that stalks the supermarket aisles. The machine, built by Badger Technologies at $35,000 each, has cameras and sensors, but no other discernible function. This automaton regulates planogram compliance - a corporate-speak term for collecting data on missing items, disordered shelves, and spills. It just makes me wonder who used to do that job?

Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 masterpiece of semi-silent film, Modern Times, captures the meat grinder of depression era America. The movie depicts dehumanizing work, antagonistic automation, and the perils of an indifferent state. Wouldn’t it be nice if the struggle for fair work was history?