Wayfair employees are reportedly preparing for a walkout over the company's sales to furnish border facilities

Wayfair's Boston headquarters.
(Image credit: Ryan Breslin / Boston.com)

Wayfair employees seem to be staging a walkout on Wednesday, but it's not part of a fight for higher wages or expanded benefits, The Boston Globe reported on Tuesday.

Instead, a Twitter account that appears to be run by employees organizing the walkout said 547 workers at the home goods company signed a petition asking that the company stop conducting business at the southern border where Wayfair's beds were apparently sold to furnish migrant detention facilities — a decision which, one anonymous employee told the Globe, was disheartening and concerning for some of the company's workforce.

The petition was allegedly rejected by the company's higher-ups, leading the organizers to arrange a work stoppage on Wednesday afternoon. In addition, the employees are asking that Wayfair donate all its profits made from the sale to the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, which has applauded the Wayfair employees.

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The letter below, which was promoted by the aforementioned Twitter account and was seemingly written by Wayfair employees, says that Wayfair engaged in $200,000 sales with a nonprofit government contractor managing camps for migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, which the employees reportedly feel makes Wayfair complicit in "furthering the inhumane actions" of the U.S. government.

The Globe reports Wayfair's executives sent an unsigned letter addressing the employees' concerns, which said they "believe it is our business to sell to any customer who is acting within the laws of the countries within which we operate."

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.