Across the United States, people are skipping Thanksgiving leftovers and television marathons to shop for sales on Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year and easily the most questionable modern American tradition.
The Friday after Thanksgiving was once the peaceful beginning of the Christmas shopping season, but retailers aggressive dedication to these sales bred a Black Friday that now begins on Thanksgiving Thursday and inspires some people to seriously, and occasionally fatally, injure each other in the pursuit of an inexpensive television.
While this shopping frenzy provides people with an excuse for spending as little time with family as possible on the holiday weekend, it also requires an assembly of retail workers to support the stores. Workers are using the increasingly extreme Black Friday hours to protest wages and conditions, with protests planned at more than 1,500 Walmart stores on Friday.
We’ll have live updates on the protests, the shopping centers and the acts of retail violence throughout the day.
Did you see the Black Friday shopping lines and traffic madness?Would you like to explain to us why you went shopping on Thanksgiving? Are you angry about going to work on a holiday or today? Tell us about in on Twitter – @GuardianUS – or in the comment thread below. We’ll republish your tales of terror or triumph here.
Black Friday bargain bingeing will be marked by hundreds of protests against major retailers. Live blog:http://t.co/fkaI35vjd0— GuardianUS (@GuardianUS) November 29, 2013
Workers group Our Walmart is leading Friday’s protests, writes Dominic Rushe. Walmart called the protests “a union orchestrated PR event”.
Tiffany Beroid, who works at the stores Laurel, Maryland store, said she would be joining this year's protest. Beroid, 29, said she earned $12,000 last year working full time as a customer service manager for the company but had to go part-time this year because she could no longer afford her child care. "Even if I worked 40 hours a week, I wouldn't be able to afford child care," she said. "We need better wages and respect in the workplace. Walmart can afford to treat us better."The company has said associates – as it calls its workers – who work over the holiday will receive an additional day's pay, a 25% discount off a Walmart purchase and will be served a Thanksgiving meal during the Black Friday shift. More than a million associates are expected to staff Walmart stores during the events.A Walmart spokesman dismissed the protests as "a union orchestrated PR event" and said that the National Labor Relations Board had okayed unions to pay some protesters $50 to join the protests. "Very few of these people will be actual Walmart employees," she said. "We are really focussed on sales and serving our customers. We don't believe there will be any disruption at stores. It's business as usual at Walmart."Walmart, the world's largest retailer, has already faced nine walkouts by workers this month at stores across the US. Retail workers have gone on strike calling for an end to alleged retaliation against protesters, more full-time positions, and better wages – specifically, that all workers make at least $25,000 a year.
