Hundreds of employees of the online home goods company Wayfair plan to walk out of their jobs Wednesday to protest against its investment in furnishing border camps where migrant children are detained, The Guardian reported.
At company headquarters in Boston, employees demanded the company stop its partnership with a government contractor to provide beds for detained migrants, the report said.
“We believe 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.” – Letter signed by 547 employees
Wayfair sold $200,000 worth of bedroom furniture via a contract with BCFS Health and Human Services, a Texas not-for-profit organization, to furnish a camp in Carrizo Springs, Texas, where up to 3,000 migrant children will be detained, employees said.
The protest comes as the US government and Trump administration have come under fire for poor conditions at border facilities and the deaths of at least six children, The Guardian reported.
After attorneys for more than 300 children said their clients were living with inadequate food, water and sanitation, the newspaper reported, were removed from an overcrowded facility.
A Trump administration official said Tuesday children detained in facilities did not need basic products like soap, toothbrushes or blankets, The Guardian reported.
In the letter to Wayfair, protesters demanded the company cancel the contract and donate $86,000 of the profits it has made thus far from these sales to Raices, a not-for-profit immigration legal service focusing on reuniting families and children separated at the border, the report said. Raices said it would welcome such a donation.
“We applaud Wayfair workers who are walking out to protest Wayfair profiting from detention centers,” Raices wrote on its official Twitter account. “No one who works for a company profiting from these camps should be standing idly by as children are dying. This takes a village.”
In response to the letter, the newspaper said, the leadership team at Wayfair said it would continue to fulfill orders for “all customers” acting within the laws of countries in which it operates.
“This does not indicate support for the opinions or actions of the groups or individuals who purchase from us,” the team wrote.
Under the hashtag #WayfairWalkout, customers have planned a boycott of the company in solidarity with workers walking out of the job. “I won’t buy another thing from your site if you are going to support these concentration camps,” one user wrote.
Wayfair did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.
– WN.com, Jack Durschlag
Photo:
AP / Chris Carlson
