America's biggest retailer may be in for an unexpectedly painful holiday season. Protesting low wages, spiking health care premiums, and alleged retaliation from management, Wal-Mart Stores workers have started to walk off the job this week. The workers, who are part of a union-backed employee coalition called Making Change at Wal-Mart, say this is the beginning of a wave of protests and strikes leading up to next week's Black Friday. A thousand store protests are planned in Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Minnesota, and Washington, DC, the group says. With 1.4 million US workers, the Bentonville, AR-based company is the US's largest private employer. For years, Wal-Mart has been targeted by unions and workers complaining about low wages, scant benefits, and retaliation against those who speak out. In an e-mail, Wal-Mart spokesman Kory Lundberg called the strike just another exaggerated publicity campaign aimed at generating headlines to mislead the retailer's customers and employees.