Black Friday 2014 starts early for Kmart shoppers — and Kmart workers. In fact, Black Friday starts almost 24 hours early, as the 52-year-old discount department store will open most of its 1,000-plus locations at the crack of dawn on Thanksgiving Day. Actually, the stores will open before dawn on Thanksgiving, with shoppers welcomed into the stores at 6 am.
Sunrise across the continental United States on Thanksgiving Day occurs between 6:30 and 7 am.
For shoppers who would rather spend Thanksgiving taking advantage of various discount purchase deals than spending the day with family and friends, the Kmart stores will stay open continuously until midnight on Black Friday, November 28 — a grueling 42-hour shop-a-thon.
Kmart says that the stores will be run on Thanksgiving Day by “seasonal associates” — in other words, temporary workers hired for the holiday shopping period only — and regular workers who have voluntarily agreed to come into work on Thanksgiving Day. Those workers will receive “holiday pay,” a Kmart spokesperson said.
Kmart has started Black Friday early by opening on Thanksgiving for 22 consecutive years. The chain also opened at 6 am on Thanksgiving — or “the day before Black Friday,” as it is coming to be known — in 2013, but overall holiday season sales fell for the store anyway.
“This holiday season is all about giving more to our members and because many like to start shopping well before Black Friday, we’re excited to open our doors early on Thanksgiving and offer other early access opportunities for them to shop and save,” said Leena Munjal, senior vice president of Sears Holdings, the parent company of both Kmart and Sears, which merged in 2005.
Kmart’s sister chain store, Sears, will also open on Thanksgiving Day, but not until 6 pm, 12 hours after Kmart.
In 2013, some Kmart workers complained that working on Thanksgiving was not as “voluntary” as Kmart made it sound, charging that they requested days off on the holiday but were turned down.
American workers have no legal guarantee of paid holidays and studies have shown that in many cases, workers are not given enough regularly scheduled hours to earn a living wage, meaning that holiday work becomes a matter of necessity rather than a truly “voluntary” option.
Some local laws may not allow Kmart to open at 6 am on Thanksgiving, and laws in Massachusetts, Maine and Rhode Island, as well as Puerto Rico, prohibit stores from opening on Thanksgiving at all. In Puerto Rico, the stores will open at midnight and in those three U.S. states, Kmart will open at 12:30 am on Black Friday, November 28, 2014.