On Black Friday, Jeffery Santos, 23, will rise at 4 a.m., grab a bagel and a strong espresso, jump on a train from the Bronx into Manhattan, and ready an American Apparel store on Broadway for its big 6 a.m. opening.  There, Mr. Santos will spend almost 18 hours on his feet, restocking, rearranging and keeping an eye on what is selling and what is not — items like cable-knit sweaters, shiny tank tops and colorful underwear.  “We try to keep each other energized. We drink a lot of coffee,” said Mr. Santos, who is the store’s inventory coordinator. “I’m always on my feet. I always have to be ready.”  It is a Black Friday filled with uncertainty for the made-in-America retailer, which filed for bankruptcy last month after bleeding money for years. American Apparel’s turnaround plan calls for most stores to stay open, but many workers acknowledge that the retailer’s future is precarious.  About 16 million people are employed in the retail industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and many are working through the holiday weekend. Retailers have hired an extra 700,000 seasonal workers this season, according to the National Retail Federation.  It is also a difficult sales period for fashion and apparel, as deep discounts have failed to ignite much interest among shoppers so far this fall. Even retail stalwarts like Macy’s and Gap have reported sluggish sales, warning they will have to discount even further to get shoppers into their stores and to the cash register.  It is not for lack of trying. At Mr. Santos’s store, the lead-up to Black Friday has involved weeks of planning, decorating, unpacking and stocking in a cramped underground storeroom.  Each item is logged, steamed and placed on a hanger or folded to be displayed on the sales floor. During sales, the store uses thinner “flock hangers” so stockers can hang more items of clothing on each rack.  On the sales floor, American Apparel’s district manager for New York, Jennifer DeNoto, moved around racks and mannequins to make space for the extra merchandise that had been arriving from the retailer’s factory in Los Angeles.  Inventory at the store spikes about 25 percent for Black Friday, and space is tight. But there must also be enough space to accommodate the Black Friday foot traffic, which can swell by about three times as much as on a normal busy day, Ms. DeNoto said.  A male mannequin crashed to the floor during the shuffle, eliciting a gasp from the staff. (“I got him!” said her colleague Savannah Krusen, a visual merchandising manager.)  “We expect volume to be crazy,” Ms. DeNoto said. “Everything is filled to the max.”  For labor groups, Black Friday and Thanksgiving — when many stores start their sales — have become a target of protest. It is a striking example, organizers say, of how retailers disrupt a beloved family holiday for profit.  Organizers have said that hundreds of Walmart workers and their backers planned to stage hunger strikes this week to demand better working conditions and a living wage of $15 an hour at the retail giant. Partly because of pressure from workers’ groups, Walmart is raising wages for its lowest-paid hourly employees to $9 this year and to $10 next year. But workers’ groups say that is not enough.  “Walmart pays its workers poverty-level wages,” Jess Levin, communications director at Making Change at Walmart, said this week. “It is unconscionable that people working for one of the richest companies in this country should have to starve.”  Brian Nick, a Walmart spokesman, said in a statement that the retailer was proud of the wages it offered its workers. He said part-time workers, on average, earned over $10 an hour, and that full-time hourly workers earned more than $13 an hour.  American Apparel, where sales associates make an estimated average of $9.64 an hour, according to self-reported data on Glassdoor.com, is going through its own labor strife. Groups of workers have called for the return of the retailer’s founder, Dov Charney, who was ousted last year. Mr. Charney started the retailer in the late 1980s as an employee-friendly company, pledging to keep manufacturing in the United States and offering workers health care coverage, subsidized lunches and even free on-site massages.  But since Mr. Charney’s departure, the new management has tried to run a tighter ship, laying off some manufacturing workers and shrinking its corporate employee base.  In a gesture to its employees, American Apparel, which opened for several hours on Thanksgiving last year, kept its stores shuttered this year. Mr. Santos said he would spend time with his family — two brothers and “tons of cousins” — in New Jersey.  Mr. Santos said he had joined American Apparel because he “likes what it stands for.” (He studied photography and now works on the retailer’s Instagram account.) And the immediate focus, he said, is getting through the holiday sales season.  “I think everyone’s just focusing on making sure the company makes money,” he said.  And during breaks on Friday, will Mr. Santos escape the mayhem for some fresh air? “Maybe,” he said. “But maybe I’ll go shopping, at Topshop or Uniqlo.”  He added, “I mean, it’s Black Friday.”  A version of this article appears in print on November 27, 2015, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Black Friday Blues for Retail Workers. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Employees of companies like American Apparel will be putting in extra effort to turn around what is shaping up to be a dismal shopping season.