Several hundred Wayfair employees walked off work on Wednesday to protest the company's sale of furniture to a new detention center in Texas intended for detained migrant children.
Employees and supporters filled Boston's Copley Square, near the company's corporate headquarters, shortly after 1:00 p.m. local time.
Just before the walkout, Wayfair's founder offered to donate $100,000 to the Red Cross "to help those in dire need of basic necessities at the border," the Boston Globe reported. But that fell short of what employees wantedan end to doing business with companies involved in the migrant holding facilities and a donation of the reported $86,000 profit from the sale to Raices, a legal services nonprofit that works with immigrants.
Workers organized last week when they caught wind of a sale to a government contractor, according to one of the employee organizers of the walkout who requested anonymity. Wayfair sold about $200,000 worth of bedroom furniture to BCFS, a nonprofit government contractor, for use in a 3,000-person detention camp 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 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.
"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.