The day after Thanksgiving, or Black Friday as it is known, is anticipated by millions of Americans as a fun holiday shopping tradition that marks the beginning of the Christmas season. But crowded stores and the hunt for bargains can create hazards for shoppers and retail workers. For example, in 2008, a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death outside a store in New York City.

But leaving aside the extreme examples of hazards, the holiday shopping season poses many less-publicized risks to retail workers.

The first risk posed to holiday workers, especially on a day like Black Friday, is the additional risk of injuries on overnight shifts. The National Institutes of Health reported that the risk of injury on an overnight shift is 30 percent higher than during a day shift. That same report also quoted a British report that showed that work injuries increased exponentially for every hour worked in a shift after eight hours. This is a risk when employees work long hours over the Black Friday weekend and when employees, many who are working another job, come to their holiday jobs after they have already worked a full day. Finally, new and temporary employees, including many holiday workers, face a higher risk for injury.

Today marks the so-called Cyber Monday, when shoppers traditionally place online orders. Online shopping has increased the need for delivery drivers. Delivery driving can be a hazardous job, due to lifting and the risk of motor-vehicle accidents. The risk of delivery driving is compounded by the fact that many delivery drivers are misclassified as independent contractors, so they lack protections like workers’ compensation. One recent story from The Indpendent out of the U.K. revealed that contract delivery drivers for Amazon.com were paid less than the minimum wage and were forced to urinate and defecate in their vehicles to make their deliveries in a timely manner.

Holiday workers face all of these risks for pay that is generally low. Plus, if an injury from a temporary holiday job prevents a person from working their regular, full-time job, that employee faces difficult issues maintaining both employment and benefits with the main, full-time employer.

If there is anything positive about the coverage of Black Friday, it’s helpful that workplace violence among low-wage workers gets covered. Among the most vulnerable to violence are convenience store clerks working overnight shifts. The Indiana Department of Labor did a study that showed 32 convenience store clerks were killed on the job in 2010. Last summer, a clerk was shot at a northwest Lincoln Kwik Shop, here in Nebraska. That murder was covered as a crime story here in Lincoln. However, that murder and the murders like it all across the country should also be covered as workplace-safety stories.