Wayfair employees plan walkout over sales to detention camps

Wayfair employees are planning to walk off work on Wednesday to protest the company’s sale of furniture to a new detention center in Texas intended for detained migrant children.

An employee organizer of the walkout who requested anonymity told CBS News that a handful of employees at the online retailer found out last week about a sale of $200,000 worth of bedroom furniture for use in a migrant detention camp. The worker said the furniture was sold to BCFS, a nonprofit government contractor, for use in a 3,000-person facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas. BCFS also operated a now-shuttered tent city in Tornillo, Texas, until early this year. 

After discovering the sale, more than 500 workers wrote to Wayfair management asking them to stop doing business with BCFS. “The United States government and its contractors are responsible for the detention and mistreatment of hundreds of thousands of migrants seeking asylum in our country — we want that to end. We also want to be sure that Wayfair has no part in enabling, supporting, or profiting from this practice,” reads their letter, posted on Twitter.

Wayfair executives reportedly declined the request to drop BCFS as a customer. “As a retailer, it is standard practice to fulfill orders for all customers and we believe it is our business to sell to any customer who is acting within the laws of the countries within which we operate,” the company wrote, according to an unsigned letter posted on Twitter. The unsigned letter added that selling to a group “does not indicate support for the opinions or actions” of that customer.

Niraj Shah, chief executive officer of Wayfair, and his wife, Jill Shah, arrive for a morning session of the annual Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 11, 2018, in Sun Valley, Idaho. Drew Angerer / Getty Images

“That was disappointing,” the employee told CBS News. An in-person meeting with Wayfair’ CEO Niraj Shah and several hundred workers on Tuesday failed to produce a solution, the person said. Following the meeting, a group of workers decided to call for a walkout Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time.

Tweeting under the handle @WayfairWalkout, the group had amassed 20,000 followers by Wednesday morning.

Wayfair has 12,000 employees across the U.S., of which about 7,000 work at the company’s Boston headquarters. The company did not reply to a request for comment.

BCFS, the contractor, confirmed the sale of the furniture to CBS News. “We believe youth should sleep in beds with mattresses,” a spokesperson said via email. BCFS has previously been critical of the administration’s policy of keeping migrant children in detention centers, calling it “a dumb, stupid idea” in December. The organization’s main line of work is providing emergency management services.

Word of a walkout spread quickly on social media, and drawn praise from a number of progressive politicians including  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who said, “This is what solidarity looks like.”

The company will earn $86,000 from its sale to BCFS, according to the employees’ Twitter account, which demands that the money be donated to Raices, a legal services nonprofit that works with immigrants.

Some on Twitter chimed in with calls to boycott Wayfair. “Well this means Wayfair will never have what I need,” said one Twitter account. “I work too hard to give my money to a business that acts immorally.”

“Whether or not to abuse children isn’t a difference of opinion, it’s a moral choice. No more business from me until you stop supporting this,” said another Tweeter.

Other accounts taunted the protesters, suggesting they should be fired or that they should donate their salaries to Raices, “not ask the company to suffer.”

“We don’t really know how many people will walk out today,” the Wayfair worker told CBS News. “A lot of people decided this issue was more important than the possibility of losing their job.”

— CBS News’ Graham Kates contributed reporting