Stop & Shop workers declared victory last week at the end of an 11-day strike, but the automated supermarket — a threat to union jobs that drew far less attention than debate over compensation and benefits — is gathering speed across the industry.

Startup companies, digital technology and intense competition are expected to transform the $632 billion industry in coming decades.

The changes range from robots reporting spills in supermarket aisles to robotics in warehouses that pluck products for delivery to checkout counters scanning products and taking payments with no workers needed.

Even greater transformation is coming as businesses use artificial intelligence, algorithms and other technology to drive change. Among developments are digital food labels that provide price, nutritional information and promotions; an automated warehouse in a supermarket that selects products for customer pickup; and cameras in supermarkets that can guess a customer’s age, gender and mood to make targeted ads.

In negotiations between Stop & Shop and the United Food and Commercial Workers representing 31,000 supermarket employees in southern New England, automation was an issue, though pay and benefits were bigger items of discussion.

Thomas A. Wilkinson, president of the UFCW Local 371, said the new contract calls for management and the union to meet and discuss specific technological changes as they arise and affect supermarket operations and employees. “It’s the best we’re able to do at this time,” he said.

For example, food prepackaged outside Stop & Shop and other supermarkets and shipped to stores could jeopardize job creation. However, “protective language” in collective bargaining agreements prohibits layoffs, Wilkinson said.

“It doesn’t mean more would not be hired in the future,” he said. “As automation comes, we’ll discuss the workforce and try to minimize losses.”

Frans Muller, chief executive officer of Ahold Delhaize, the Dutch parent company of Stop & Shop, told investor analysts on a conference call in February said two U.S. properties, Stop & Shop and Giant, will introduce robots as the company makes “one of the largest deployments of robotics innovation in the U.S. grocery industry overall.”

And Ahold’s launch of “click and collect” points — places for consumers to pick up orders purchased on line — is on track with service at 53 Food Lion stores, he said.

The company also expects to open a fully mechanized distribution center in Holland that can deliver 400,000 crates and boxes a day, he said.

Chief Financial Officer Jeff Carr told analysts that Ahold will be “running more and more tests and roll-out of electronic shelf labeling.”

“We see a lot of work still being done in labor efficiency, by technology it continues to be an opportunity for us,” he said.

Where technology once extended to bar coding and scanning to speed up and make more accurate the checkout process and provide instant inventory information, change now embraces the entirety of grocery shopping and warehousing.

Products in the supermarket and grocery industry “have largely reached saturation levels,” with the only real growth from the introduction of new niche goods or advances in product formulas,” according to a December report by IBISWorld, an industry group.

“The market for grocery products has undergone little change in recent years,” it said.

But supermarkets have applied technological change in self-checkout aisles and automated warehouse equipment that have boosted operating efficiencies, IBISWorld said.

Wages, which are the second-largest cost in the industry, accounted for 10.2 percent of industry revenue in 2018, up about a half-percentage point over five years due largely to a higher minimum wage, the report said. Due to technological advances, such as self-service checkouts, many low wage industry jobs have been eliminated, leaving a larger share of higher skill workers who have greater compensation, IBISWorld said.

Technological changes in the offing include:

The Kroger Co. and U.K.-based Ocado Group, announced in February their first automated warehouse with digital and robotic equipment near Kroger’s headquarters in Cincinnati. Kroger plans to order three customer fulfillment centers by the end of 2018 and identify up to 20 in three years.

Kroger and Microsoft announced a partnership to develop digital stores that provide digital displays of products showing prices, promotions and nutritional and dietary information. Kroger also will generate revenue by selling digital advertising space.

Amazon, which owns Whole Foods, has introduced Amazon Go that uses an app for shoppers to pick up items and billed to shoppers’ accounts as they leave the store. Last September, Marc Perrone, president of the UFCW, said Amazon and CEO Jeff Bezos “are deploying a business model that poses an existential threat to millions of American jobs.”

And Sedano’s Supermarkets, a Florida grocer, is working with Takeoff Technologies, an e-grocery automation startup, on what they call the “first robotic supermarket.” Customers place grocery orders using a mobile app and orders are received and processed by an automated fulfillment facility, with help from supermarket staff. Takeoff said robots can assemble grocery orders of up to 60 items in several minutes, a fraction of the speed and cost of manually selecting items.

Technology, which has upended work since before the advent of the assembly line more than 100 years ago, could again bring unintended changes to the industry.

Automation could lead to dividing grocery sales along class and income levels with upscale customers shopping at small, local and well-staffed stores and poor consumers using less pricey, bigger stores with lower-quality items, said Lane Windham, associate director at Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

In the short-term, automation is prompting concern among employees, not just about the future of jobs, but how much power they’ll have as automation advances, she said.

“Retail workers certainly see it. They’re in the stores, they see customers scanning their own groceries,” Windham said.

Or as Wilkinson, president of UFCW Local 371, said of his union members: “They know where the ball is going, no question about it.”