Many Wal-Mart employees pushing for higher wages at the bargain store mega-chain said Friday that they are planning protests at 1,600 Wal-Mart store locations on Black Friday. This scheduled boycott is aimed to really hurt sales of the brand, as Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year in the U.S.

The labor group, called Our Walmart, said it also held protests last year on the day after Thanksgiving at between 1,200 and 1,400 Wal-Mart stores.

The owner of Wal-Mart brand stores, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., is the largest private employer in the U.S. and has been a recent target for many activist groups trying to raise the minimum wage across the country.

Just the day before this latest workers' group announcement, 23 people outside a Los Angeles-area Wal-Mart were arrested during a protest against the company's low wages and retaliation against employees who try to organize workers for better conditions.

The protest in California lasted several hours before the Thursday arrests, according to Our Walmart and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Spokesman for UFCW, Marc Goumbri, said that about 30 people entered the Crenshaw-neighborhood store in the morning and held a sit-down protest for almost two hours. The employees then left and traveled to a Wal-Mart store in Pico Rivera in east Los Angeles, where the arrests eventually occurred.

Police said the 23 people arrested were blocking a busy intersection. Officials added that they were cited for failure to disperse and later released.

"Over the last year, Wal-Mart workers have pressured Wal-Mart to change its pregnancy policy, provide access to more hours and most recently to pledge to phase out its minimum wage jobs," the UFCW posted on its website.

Wal-Mart spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said that the retailer does not retaliate against workers who strike, as the protesters claim.

"The reality is that few Wal-Mart associates participate in these labor-organized protests," she said.

Chief Executive of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Douglas McMillon said last month that the company would work to remove minimum wage positions "over time." However, this amount of jobs is an extremely small proportion, roughly 6,000 of Wal-Mart's 1.3 million workers earn the minimum wage.

Additionally, the company claimed that the average full-time hourly wage for employees is $12.92, well above the federal minimum at $7.25.