The GEM Debate:
Should Retail Workers Be Off On “Black Thanksgiving”?

We’ve seen the trend of starting the holiday shopping season earlier and here it is trying to move up the clock again.  Workers in the retail industry are up in arms about having to work not just early on Friday morning, but now on Thanksgiving Day.  With Black Friday deals getting earlier and earlier, retailers have to have employees there to report for duty, right?  Well, yeah, but the employees are not too happy about the job requirement.

So Rene’s take is you know what job you signed up for. Her point is that workers should not dictate to business how they conduct, well, their business. The workers knew the terms and conditions when they signed up for the job. And what about people working in movie theaters? I haven’t heard many complaints from them and Thanksgiving evening is one of the busiest movie-going nights.

Look, I was once a person who worked in a 24-hour environment and spent too many holidays with the third shift woman, Younghee, who would always leave her family to come relieve me.  We didn’t just do this one year either. Seeing Younghee on holidays became a tradition.  We’d smile at each other, comment on any plans, and she’d go to work, and I’d go home to get sleep because changing of the guard was at midnight not a whole lot of family fun to be had at that hour.  It’s what I did to feed my family, and feed them a little better because that’s prime money.  Holiday pay is a great way to stuff your pockets, but I guess the question is at what cost?  My holiday worker zest occurred when I was sans baby.  I’m not so sure how I would feel having to leave her now.

So what do you think?  Should the workers be able to dictate when they work, or should they just realize that in this economy you have to take the good with the bad? Or are we as a society really rushing this whole Black Friday thing?

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