Labor pursues liberty and happiness in many ways, like fighting 'variable pricing'

On the occasion of marking 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, organized labor surely must recognize its own version: the landmark National Labor Relations Act, which declared that working people specifically share in the promise of a new nation.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” the Founders asserted, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”

Signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on July 5, 1935, the National Labor Relations Act clarified that workers’ lives, liberty and the pursuits of happiness don’t stop on the job, and – banding together – working Americans can organize and negotiate for wages, hours and working conditions.

The world took notice, too, and 13 years later established the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That United Nations document in Article 23 formalize the right to form unions.

(More recently, the UN’s International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled 10-4 that “the right to strike of workers and their organizations is protected” under the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize Convention of 1948, also known as International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 87.)

Embracing pursuits of wages, hours and working conditions can take many forms, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and unions take seriously their involvement in social issues beyond the workplace.

Currently, the United Food and Commercial Workers union is leading an effort to control a technological scheme affecting their workers, but all working people and the consumers we all are: “variable pricing” (also known as “surveillance pricing” or “algorithmic pricing” – or the more harmless-sounding “personalized pricing,” “dynamic pricing”). Everyday consumers see this frequently, in situations where hotels, transportation providers, event promoters, and other businesses hike prices when demand increases.

Regardless of its name, it’s the practice of companies using Artificial Intelligence, personal data, and algorithms to charge different individuals different prices for the exact same product.

In particular, the UFCW warns that the adoption of Electronic Shelf Labels (ESLs) by retailers like Walmart and Kroger creates a slippery slope where prices can secretly change based on customers’ location, browsing history, or personal demographics, and the union is lobbying for the federal “Stop Price Gouging in Grocery Stores Act,” introduced on Capitol Hill. This legislation aims to ban surveillance pricing, regulate the use of electronic shelf labels, and enforce transparency on facial recognition technology.

Ademola Oyefeso, UFCW’s international vice president and director of legislative and political action, says ESLs are part of a widespread surveillance and data system that can rapidly change prices. At the most basic level, prices are adjusted through centralized control systems, where corporate employees can update the price of products across thousands of stores almost instantaneously with a few clicks. Unlike paper tags, which workers must manually replace aisle by aisle over the course of hours or overnight shifts, ESLs allow prices to change within seconds from a central dashboard.

Already, the union has successfully pushed for localized legislation. Model laws requiring analog (paper) shelf pricing in stores over 10,000 square feet has been introduced or passed in 12 states, including New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Tennessee.

In Illinois, State Rep Maura Hirschauer (D-Batavia) recognizes the problem of jacking up prices unilaterally, and she’s pushing a bill to ban the practice.

“Companies collect enormous amounts of information about us,” she said, “ – about where we go, what we search for, what we buy, how long we stay on a web site, and even what devices we use. Increasingly this information is being fed into algorithms that can decide how much each of us pays for the exact same product or service.

“This bill does not ban ordinary sales, discounts, loyalty programs, coupons, or legitimate market-based pricing that Illinoisans have come to rely on,” she continued. “Businesses can still respond to supply and demand, transportation costs, promotions, and competition. What this bill does is stop the use of personal surveillance data to manipulate prices for consumers.”

The measure, HB5756, is currently stuck in the House Rules Committee.

But the UFCW isn’t stuck.

Since February, the UFCW – which represents about 1.2 million essential workers across the U.S. and Canada, including grocery store workers – not only has endorsed the “Stop Price Gouging in Grocery Stores Act,” S. 3892 in the Senate and H.R. 4966 in the House but has expanded its related nationwide initiative, a framework for regulations called the “Affordable Groceries and Good Jobs” initiative.

“The goal of the campaign is to stop it before it happens,” Oyefeso told Civil Eats, an independent, nonprofit digital news publication. “Let’s not be Pandora and let it out of the box. Let’s keep everything in the box and stop it.”

Most retailers say Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) technology is just n efficiency move, UFCW reports that some workers say it makes what used to be routine labeling much more complicated and also could result in reduced hours or job cuts.

“I’m super worried about what ESLs are going to do to the price tag and the idea of fairness in the marketplace,” Katie Wells, a senior fellow at AI Now Institute who has done research on Instacart’s algorithmic pricing practices,” she said. “Big Tech-like injection into grocery store operations should be cause for alarm.”

Oyefeso agreed, adding that preventing algorithms from driving up prices is tied directly to both affordability and labor protections: goals that are baked into the union’s campaign name.

“The name of the campaign is ‘Affordable Groceries and Good Jobs’,” he said. “Because if the groceries aren’t affordable, it doesn’t matter what job you have.”