Wayfair sold beds to furnish border camps. Its employees are walking out in protest

[mfcorey1]

Employees of the online furniture retailer Wayfair are planning a walkout on Wednesday to protest the company's sale of over $200,000 in bedroom furniture to a detention center for migrant children in Texas.


"We don't want to be profiting off of something that's putting so many lives at risk and putting children at harm," said a spokesperson for the employees organizing the action. "We want Wayfair to stand on the right side of history."

The walkout is scheduled to take place at the company's Boston headquarters, where over 5,000 of the company's more than 13,000 employees work.

The action is part of a growing trend of employee activism at major tech companies. In Silicon Valley and beyond, white-collar tech workers have been increasingly crying foul when their employers fail to live up to the values in their high-minded mission statements. In the last year, employees at Google and Riot Games have staged walkouts to protest their companies' handling of sexual harassment claims and forced arbitration policies, while Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Salesforce have all faced employee protests over those companies' involvement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Defense.

The protest at Wayfair began to form on Wednesday morning, when an employee noticed the company had made a large business-to-business sale to the Texas-based contractor BCFS Health and Human Services, which has been in the news for operating child detention facilities with unsanitary conditions and rife with incidents of abuse. With some digging, employees deduced that the order was destined for a new facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, which is set to jail up to 3,000 migrant children.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/wayfair-sold-beds-to-furnish-border-camps-its-employees-are-walking-out-in-protest/ar-AADpoy5?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout

[CincyDem]

1. I can see two sides to this and I'm not sure yet that I agree with the employees.

On one hand, I get the idea of not enabling the administration. Providing them with any service or product that advances their current unjust and immoral roundup is simply wrong.

On the other hand, we're talking about beds, not bullets. If 100% of all bed manufacturers boycotted the government, they'll simply have these folks sleeping on the floor or wooden plank bunks.

Wayfair providing beds after the fact to 3,000 children in "the system" feels different than Amazon, Microsoft, Google et al who provide intake tools before the fact that facilitate getting people into the system.

Take the Wayfair experience to the next step...Drug Company A gets an order for 2,000 doeses of flu shots, or antibiotics, or gauze or bandaids and an employee learns that these drugs are headed to a new facility. Should they walkout in protest in the hope it will deny their supplies to the facility? Does it help these folks to be denied antibiotics or basic medical treatment. Go further - if a firm gets an order for 10,000 tampons and they learn it's for a detention center...should they fill it ?

I agree with their outrage and if we were dealing with a normal administration that has some/any moral compass - their actions might have an effect. A normal administration might say "I've got to have somewhere for these people to sleep". I believe that being without beds, drugs or basic medical supplies will NOT be a factor in Trump's roundup and keeping these necessities/comforts out of the system will only worsen the conditions for people who need our help more than ever.

We need to focus our outrage and firms helping put these kids at risk - not the firms helping (and yes, profiting) them once their in the system. I know it's a slippery slope once there's money involved and that's where I'm stuck. Should Wayfare donate the beds so as to not take "dirty money". Should they facilitate the administration by foregoing their profits and giving them a break on the bed price ? I don't know. Making money on this feels wrong but making it easier for the administration feels wrong.

Maybe a better result is sell the beds...donate the profits to the a verified legal aid organization working to get these kids out and reunited.

The Wayfair walkout is fueled by appropriate, but IMHO misdirected outrage...the result of good people wanting to something/anything to stop this insanity.

[Martin Eden]

5. +1

Child separation and detention is a horror in the first place, but they should at least have beds to sleep on.

[DENVERPOPS]

9. Maybe, some uber wealthy Democrat

Maybe, some uber wealthy Democrat should have things delivered un-announced, except to the press of course, at ALL the known detention centers.....Just back up the Semi Trucks with Legal minorities standing by to deliver the items and set them up.
Let the Republican Main Stream Media cover that, instead of what Trump ate for breakfast............

[subterranean]

14. Apparently donations are not accepted.

Some local residents showed up to donate basic items like soap and toothbrushes and were turned away. They were told that government agencies are prohibited by law from accepting donations.

[KentuckyWoman]

12. Wayfair flunked Marketing 101

Sell the beds so kids have a place to sleep. Advertise that you did and that you gave whatever dollar amount, all the profits, to a charity helping get these kids out.

[CincyDem]

13. ---- 1000%++. n/t

[WhiskeyGrinder]

15. Did you really just say that Wayfair is "helping kids" by selling the government beds to furnish

concentration camps?

[CincyDem]

17. yeah - I said it.

Did you really just say that not selling them beds will cause the government to step back and say "sheesh - we got nowhere for these kids to sleep so we better shut down the camps".

As I see it, there are two options at this point until we shut these guys down legally or legislatively and vote them out of office in 2020. 1) Kids in camps sleeping on concrete floors and wooden bunks. 2) Kids in camps sleeping on beds.

The constant in those two choices is "Kids in camps". Selling (or not selling) them beds isn't what's going to stop Kids in camps.

Same is true for the company that sells them blankets, pillows, medicines, personal hygiene products...all of it. Since the gov't can't accept private donations - if they're willing to buy this stuff someone should sell it to them. There is no amount of withholding that's going to suddenly make this administration moral.

Fight the issue on the right battlefield...withholding comfort items from these kids is the wrong place.

This isn't like I'm saying sell them bullets, sell them guns, sell them zip-cuffs, tasers or billyclubs. Sell them comfort items.

So yeah, I said it. IMHO, of course.



An on edit...use the profit to donate to a legal group that is fighting on the battlefield that will make a difference. Use the fed's money (technically ours) back at 'em.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

20. "Did you really just say that not selling them beds will cause the government to step back and say

"sheesh - we got nowhere for these kids to sleep so we better shut down the camps".

No. I asked a question to make sure I was really understanding what you were saying.

[CincyDem]

21. ok - sorry for the jumpy reaction. I read it differently (and incorrectly).

As they say in basketball...no blood, no foul. Sorry.

[McKim]

2. Kudos to these Brave People!

Kudos to these brave people who cannot afford to lose their jobs. I applaud the high minded employees who are doing this for the nation!!!!

[pazzyanne]

4. The fact that the Wayfair employees are planning a walkout

puts/ keeps the atrocities at the border in the news. I support that completely. This is the outrage that that most of the nation is experiencing. The most recent numbers for taxpayer money being spent per child per day is now $775 per day per child. If the child is left in their family unit that crossed the border the cost $298 per day per family unit. If the child were processed when they cross the border and released to family living in the US (which most of them have) the cost to the American taxpayer is $0 per day per child/ family unit. Just a little ammunition for the next time a Repug brings up immigrants "using the system". Seems releasing them to family in the US, which has been done in the past, would be the cheapest option for taxpayers.

[woodsprite]

3. Are the beds to be used by the kids, or the people running the place? nt

[pazzyanne]

6. Great question!

[Cosmocat]

8. My thought - does anyone really think these jackasses aren't going out

and getting the absolute shittiest mattresses possible and just throwing them on the floor?

At best there are a lot of furniture makers out there that specialize in providing for institutional settings, where they could purchase furniture for a big order like this a good bit cheaper than Wayfair.

[woodsprite]

16. Well, according to the math, for 3000 kids, it would have averaged $67.00 per bed.

I highly doubt that even with quantity discount for the government that Wayfair would sell a bed for $67.

[Cosmocat]

22. My $$$ is on

someone buying beds for their own little operation somewhere ...

[peacefreak2.0]

7. Good for the employees.

As a consumer, I am pretty careful where I spend my money. I don't know if I want to support a company that supplies concentration camps. That's how you impact corporate behavior.

[Oppaloopa]

10. Me either and I was just going to.

[Honeycombe8]

11. OTOH, if no one sells them beds, the immigrants won't have beds to sleep on.

I don't think it's wrong to sell them something that goes to the comfort, health, or safety of the immigrants. I see the opposite argument, though.

If Wayfair were selling handcuffs or security zappers, etc., that would be different.

[fescuerescue]

18. I dunno.

American made bedroom furniture seems a bit better than traditional prison furniture made of steel and concrete.

They selling beds, not gas chamber equipment.

The next time they buy equipment, it'll probably be from a chinese company.

Wayfaire stuff looks pretty nice https://www.wayfair.com/furniture/cat/furniture-c45974.html

Much nicer than standard prison stuff . http://www.minncor.com/detention-furniture-beds