Watch: advocate argues for minimum wage in Rhode Island’s going to $20
Affordable Rhode Island’s Michael Beauregard argues that the minimum wage should be $20 an hour, to get closer to what it actually costs to live.
- Rhode Island lawmakers are considering a bill to limit grocery stores to eight self-checkout kiosks.
- The proposed legislation would also require one employee for every two self-checkout stations.
- The bill specifically targets grocery stores, which has drawn criticism from business associations.
PROVIDENCE – As lawmakers debate raising Rhode Island’s minimum wage, which would impact many grocery store workers, a bill to limit the number of self-checkout lanes at grocery stores is again stirring conversation.
Rep. Megan Cotter, D-Exeter, Hopkinton, Richmond, introduced a version of her initial bill, proposed in 2023, to reduce the number of self-checkout kiosks a grocery store can have open, and mandate the amount of labor required to operate them. Her bill, H 7290, has eight co-sponsors in the House, while Senate President Valarie Lawson, D-East Providence, introduced a companion bill in the Senate, S 2342.
When Cotter’s bill was first introduced, it included a mandate that grocers give a 10% discount to customers who used self-checkout for more than 10 items. The newest iteration scraps that language in favor of a more streamlined approach:
- Grocery stores can have no more than eight self-checkout kiosks operating at one time.
- One checkout line must be manned for every two self-checkout kiosks.
- One worker must be assigned to every two self-checkout stations.
Here’s how the math on the self-checkout proposal works:
For a store operating the maximum number of self-checkout kiosks, eight, this means the store would be running four lines with cashiers at a time. That same store would also need four people monitoring the self-checkout stations, for a total of eight workers across 12 cash registers, both manned and unmanned.
Limiting the number of self-checkout aisles a store can have is all about preserving jobs and hours worked, she previously said.
Why stores are using self-checkout
In 2023, Cotter said her original bill was partially a function of her frustration with using the Walmart self-checkout kiosks.
Problems with self-checkout kiosks abound as each industry, from groceries to pharmacies to hardware to big box stores like Walmart, sets different parameters and triggers on self-checkout machines.
Clements’ Marketplace Operations Director Charles Anthony IV wrote in testimony against Cotter’s bill that the grocery, with locations in Bristol and Portsmouth, installed the self-checkout kiosks to be their “fast lanes.”
“With smaller orders often causing backups across the Front End, the Fast Lanes have helped to maintain a steady pace and take care of our customers more efficiently,” Anthony wrote.
At Target, self-checkout was meant to be limited to people with 10 items or fewer.
Why limit self-checkout?
Cotter’s bill only targets grocery stores. That caught the attention of Rhode Island Food Dealers Association President Scott Bromberg, who submitted testimony against the proposal.
“This proposal is especially egregious because it specifically targets only grocery stores,” Bromberg wrote. “Big box retailers, along with hardware stores, pharmacies, dollar stores, fast food chains and more utilize self-checkout to allow them to deploy their staff where needed most.”
The bill mostly targets traditional grocery stores, but also hits pharmacies, like CVS and Walgreens, but might not include big box retailers like Walmart and Target.
It defines groceries as:
- Raw or processed food or drink
- Prescription and over-the-counter drugs
- Hygiene items when a store also sells food, drink and “miscellaneous household items” like laundry detergent and dishwasher soap.
A grocery store is defined as a business that gets most of its revenue from selling “groceries.”
Shaw’s and Star Market’s Jim O’Leary wrote that 60% to 65% of its transactions are done via self-checkout systems and 10% are done through its drive-up platform.
“Only approximately 25% of customers utilize traditional staffed registers. This distribution highlights the importance of maintaining adaptive service models to accommodate a broad spectrum of consumer preferences, thereby enhancing the overall shopping experience and most importantly convenience,” O’Leary wrote.
Which RI stores use self-checkout?
Stores in the state offer a wide variety of takes on self-checkout.
At many Five Below stores, self-checkout is the only option. Home Depot has replaced most checkout lanes at the front of many its stores with self-checkout lanes.
At the discount grocer Aldi, many stores have open self-checkout kiosks. Depending on how slow business is, it can sometimes take a few minutes for a cashier to return to a regular checkout lane, as employees do double duty as cashiers and stockers. Customers are also expected to do their own bagging.
Stop & Shops usually have a variety of self-checkout kiosks and cashiers, but the kiosks practically shout at customers and the scales, meant to prevent theft, often wrongly register item weights, forcing a worker to override the machine after an item is bagged too quickly, or not quickly enough.
Many CVS stores also have the self-checkout kiosks.
Self-checkouts have also moved into the world of fast food, for example at Taco Bell and McDonald’s, shifting workers away from being cashiers.
Is low-skill labor worth keeping?
The two-self checkout restriction bills are aimed at preserving jobs often classified as entry level or low skill.
The worth and value of those jobs is increasingly under fire by legislators and the business community, especially as the debate over minimum wage increases rages.
Rep. Stephen Casey, D-Woonsocket, made the case during a hearing on March 18 that it would be unfair for the minimum wage to be increased because public sector workers don’t make enough, making an argument that low-skilled labor deserves to be paid less.
“So the average fireman in Rhode Island makes $28.06 an hour, so you’re saying that the guy that’s flipping burgers should make $20 an hour?” Casey asked during the hearing.
That argument also appeared during the debate over a bill to give health care workers time-and-a-half on Sundays, as Woonsocket resident Jason Romblad said he was “amazed that people selling us a pack of gum will get time-and-a-half on these days, but a health care worker who takes care of us when we are sick and hurt do not get it.”
A separate bill to strip caterers and commissary workers of time-and-a-half on Sundays and holidays was lauded by businesses groups that called for ending the practice entirely. National Federation of Independent Businesses State Director Christopher Carlozzi wrote in support of ending the benefit, claiming that paying minimum wage workers $24 an hour on Sundays instead of the mandated $16 (a $64 pre-tax difference for an eight-hour shift) means the difference between opening a shop on Sundays or leaving it closed.
According to the state’s latest Occupational Employment And Wage Statistics, published in May 2025, cashiers, an estimated 9,710 of them in the state, make a mean average of $15.90 an hour. That climbs to $16.67 an hour for “experienced wage.” The entry wage was $14 an hour, the minimum wage in 2024.
In January, the minimum wage increased to $16 an hour and it increases to $17 an hour on Jan. 1, 2027.
Other large groups of similarly paid professions are fast food and counter workers, 12,650 of them; dining room and cafeteria attendants, 2,720 of them; and dishwashers, 2,830 of them.
The statistics count an estimated 493,800 employed, making cashiers 2% of the total employment in the state.
