For 22 years, David Lozano has worked as a cashier at Vons, scanning produce and stacking groceries neatly into plastic bags for customers. He averaged around 37 hours a work week before the pandemic, but now he’s lucky if he hits 28 hours. The culprit of his pay cut?
“They brought in eight self-checkouts,” the 47 year-old said of the machines that arrived around 2021. “I had to change my lifestyle, and my daily routine to be able to feed myself.”
Lozano picked up a second job at a liquor store to supplement his income, where he earns $17.87 an hour — $10 less than his hourly wage at Vons. These days, he works the closing shift to try to scrape the extra hours he can helping the stragglers at checkout. On those nights, the store closes at 1 a.m. and it takes him two hours to ride the bus from East Hollywood back home to Lincoln Heights…