Wayfair Employees Are Having a Town Hall to Discuss Next Actions

Photo by Alyssa Vaughn

Last month’s Wayfair walkout drew national attention and crowds  of supporters. Two weeks later, the organizers want to make sure they haven’t been forgotten.

“You may be wondering what we’re up to,” reads a tweet from the @wayfairwalkout account posted Tuesday afternoon. “We haven’t heard from leadership after a second petition of over 500 names, so employees are having a town hall on Friday to decide what’s next for us. Thank you so much to everyone who has supported us so far!”

You may be wondering what we’re up to; we haven’t heard from leadership after a second petition of over 500 names, so employees are having a town hall on Friday to decide what’s next for us. Thank you so much to everyone who has supported us so far!

— wayfairwalkout (@wayfairwalkout) July 10, 2019

Employees of the Boston-based furniture retailer staged the initial walkout to protest the company’s contract selling bedding to an immigrant detention center at the U.S.-Mexico border.

According to an employee, Wayfair recently agreed to supply about $200,000 worth of beds and bed frames to the government contractor BCFS to stock a new facility built to detain as many as 3,000 migrant children in Carrizo Springs, Texas. The employee, who asked not to be named, says that Wayfair stands to make about $86,000 in profit from the deal.

Over 500 Wayfair employees signed a letter opposing the sale. Company executives declined to stop selling the beds to the facility, writing, “it is our business to sell to any customer who is acting within the laws of the countries within which we operate.” The morning of the protest, Wayfair announced the company would donate $100,000 to the Red Cross, but walkout organizers pointed out that the Red Cross is not involved in the facilities they object to.

Wayfair did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Boston.