Black Friday 2012
What was Black Friday shopping and is now Thanksgiving shopping gives us an amazing view on the race to the bottom when it comes to jobs and the notion that workers maybe deserve to have lives. Once it was a question of how early stores opened on Black Friday. Then some started opening on Thanksgiving. Now it's a question of how early they'll open on the holiday. You know, Thanksgiving, one of the big two holidays of the year in this country? Only now, it's a major workday for many retail workers who aren't paid enough to live on and don't get paid time off.
- Walmart, of course, is one of the big bads of Thanksgiving shopping. But that's okay, because it's been open on Thanksgiving for 25 years! And if it's a corporate tradition, that must make it wholesome or something. In fact, Bryce Covert reports, nearly a million Walmart workers will have to work on Thanksgiving. The sad thing is, even many with families they like and would like to spend Thanksgiving with will likely be glad to work since a little extra holiday pay has an outsized impact when your employer underpays you and doesn't give you enough hours.
- Kmart will open at 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving and stay open straight through until midnight on Black Friday, so Kmart workers can forget about any kind of holiday.
- Crack Barrel will be open its usual hours—6 a.m. to 10 p.m.
- Radio Shack will open at 8 a.m. on Thanksgiving, because we all need small electronics and accessories first thing in the morning on a major holiday. Update: After criticism, Radio Shack decided to close between noon and 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving, which is just kind of bizarre.
- J.C. Penney will be opening at 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving, after opening at 8 p.m. last year and at 6 a.m. on Black Friday as recently as 2012. Best Buy will also open at 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving, as will Toys R Us. Best Buy will close between 1 a.m. and 8 a.m. Friday, while Toys R Us will be open for 30 hours straight, closing at 11 p.m. Friday night.
- Macy's is in the open-on-Thanksgiving game with real enthusiasm. The department store opened on Thanksgiving for the first time in 2013, and in 2014, it's pushing up opening times from 8 p.m. to 6 p.m.
- Target, Kohl's, and Sears will also open at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving.
The good news, such as it is, is that many of these retailers will do better by their workers than Walmart, paying time and a half rather than Walmart's easy-to-manipulate formula for holiday pay.
But what's particularly stupid about all of this is that Thanksgiving and Black Friday aren't actually that valuable for retailers. They're great for hype, but for actual results? Not so much.