Wayfair employees are planning a walkout for Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. in protest of a contract the company reportedly has with a government contractor to furnish migrant camps at the southern border.
The employees, who began to publicize their campaign on Twitter Tuesday under the handle @wayfairwalkout, are asking that Wayfair cease doing business with the contractor and donate the proceeds already made to the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), a nonprofit that provides legal services to migrants.
In a letter to the Boston-based company's leadership team, employees wrote that Wayfair recently fulfilled an order for $200,000 of bedroom furniture for a facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, that will ultimately hold 3,000 migrant children seeking asylum in the United States.
A Wayfair employee confirmed the veracity of the letter, which was posted on Twitter, to BostInno. The workers asked the leadership team to immediately stop doing business with BCFS, as well as all other contractors involved in the migrant detention camps, and to establish a code of ethics for B2B sales.
"The practice of detaining children and adults at our Southern border has been condemned since its inception but since the acceleration of the practice in 2018, and the increase in death and injury that has come with that acceleration, we have seen more vocal condemnation of that practice," the employees wrote. "We believe that the current actions of the United States and their contractors at the Southern border do not represent an ethical business partnership Wayfair should choose to be a part of."
Over the weekend, the New Yorker reported that conditions in migrant facilities at the border were increasingly worse: flu and lice outbreaks were going untreated, and children were filthy, sleeping on cold floors, and taking care of one another because of the lack of attention from guards.
The Wayfair leadership team responded to the letter in an internal communication to employees, calling the fulfillment of the BCFS order "standard practice" and noting that it "does not indicate support for the opinions or actions of the groups or individuals who purchase from us."
"As business leaders, we also believe in the importance of respecting diversity of thought within our organization and across our customer base," the leadership team wrote. (The veracity of this note was also confirmed to BostInno.)
BostInno reached out to the walkout organizers and to Wayfair's press team for comment but has not yet received a response. We will update this article when more information becomes available.
