Walmart Black Friday 2014: Nationwide Protests Threaten To Sink Year’s Biggest Shopping Day

Walmart could be facing a difficult Black Friday 2014 as a group representing hourly workers at the retail giant is planning a series of nationwide protests.

The group is pushing for a $15 per hour wage for employees along with consistent full-time work, and to draw attention to its cause is planning to stage protests at more than 1,600 stores in the United States.

The protest group, OUR Walmart, has also published a petition that calls out Walmart for not caring about its employees.

“While Rob, Alice and the rest of the Waltons are by far the richest family in America, many of the Walmart workers who helped to build that fortune are struggling just to get by. Workers at Walmart are looking for fair shot, but the silver-spooned Walton family is robbing them of a decent living.

“Walmart workers in nearly 800 stores have joined calls for Walmart to increase wages to $15/hr and give them access to fulltime. Join them here and tell the Waltons that if they don’t respond, you’ll be in the streets on Black Friday!”

But Walmart officials are trying to calm fears of the Black Friday 2014 protests, saying that only a “very small fraction” of employees were expected to participate.

Walmart has been facing some other bad Black Friday news outside of the expected protests. This week the retailer was forced to take action after some savvy Amazon members created a product page for a $90 PlayStation 4 to take advantage of Walmart’s price matching policy. A number of shoppers printed out the page and duped Walmart into selling the normally $400 console, forcing Walmart to alter its policy.

“[We] can’t tolerate fraud or attempts to trick our cashiers,” Walmart released a statement. “This kind of activity is unfair to the millions of customers who count on us every day for honest value. With this in mind, we’ve updated our policy to clarify that we will match prices from Walmart.com and 30 major online retailers, but we won’t honor prices from marketplace vendors, third-party sellers, auction sites or sites requiring memberships.”

A list of stores that will be affected by the Walmart Black Friday 2014 protests can be found at blackfridayprotests.org.