Following an internal conflict over Wayfair's contract to furnish facilities where migrant children are being detained, about 300 employees of the online furniture retailer walked out on Wednesday.
The move came after employees asked Wayfair's leadership team to stop doing business with the government contractor BCFS, which manages camps at the southern border where migrants seeking asylum in the US are being held. The employees began to publicize their campaign on Twitter Tuesday under the handle @wayfairwalkout after the leadership team declined to meet those demands.
Tom Brown, an employee at Wayfair who helped organize the walkout, said they decided to leave work when managers declined to stop doing business with BCFS and other contractors involved in the border camps.
"We should do everything we can to stop this," Brown said. "This is not a political thing. This is a humanitarian issue."
In a letter to the company’s leadership team published online Tuesday, employees wrote that Wayfair had 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 Wayfair leadership team responded to the letter in an internal memo, also confirmed to BostInno, 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.” Wayfair's press team has not responded to requests for comment.
Wayfair organizers said that the company would donate $100,000 to the American Red Cross, but while that might be evidence of the leadership team's willingness to listen, "the Red Cross has nothing to do with these ICE-operated facilities."
Activist brass band HONK! joined the protest.
On Wednesday, the Atlantic published audio of an internal meeting in which Wayfair executives said they did not want to take a political stance.
“The business basically exists to be a profit-generating entity, tries to create success for all our employees, tries to create wealth in all our employees so that we can all have an impact on the world,” chief technology officer Steve Conine said during the meeting. “I mean, we’re not a political entity. We’re not trying to take a political side in this.”
But for many of the Wayfair employees in Copley Square on Wednesday, the company's path forward was simple.
"No profits from prison camps," said Thomas Pope.
Another Wayfair employee, who did not give a name, put it this way: “A good place to draw the line is kids in jail,” she said. “This isn’t about the bottom line or attacking rich people ... this is about getting children home to their families and not making money off of detaining them in a literal prison.”
The Wayfair walkout comes on the heels of other high-profile walkouts in the tech world. In November, 20,000 employees at about 40 Google offices walked out to protest Google’s handling of sexual harassment claims and other workplace issues, and to demand more transparency around harassment incidents and pay levels at the company. (In April, two workers said they faced retaliation for organizing—which is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act.) Walkouts are gaining increasing traction in digital media, too; just this month, collective bargaining units at BuzzFeed and Vox Media walked off the job to demand that managers negotiate their contracts in good faith.
Over the last year, workers at Clarifai, Google, Amazon, and other major tech firms have called on their companies to cancel the building of a censored search engine for the Chinese government, walk away from the Defense Department's now-notorious Project Maven, and stop selling facial recognition software to law enforcement. All this is part of the #TechWontBuildIt movement. Wayfair's labor action seems to be the latest chapter.
Google Walkout organizers are continuing to agitate and have expressed solidarity with the Wayfair activists' campaign.
Others that have declared solidarity include the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter, the employee activist group Tech Workers Coalition, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who called the walkout a reminder of workers' collective power. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), whose presidential campaign includes strengthening labor and weakening big tech, also chimed in late Tuesday to express support.
