Business
Wayfair Donates $100,000 to Red Cross in Response to Employee Walkout
Published
3 years agoon

- Hundreds of employees at the home goods retailer Wayfair walked out of the retailer’s headquarters on Wednesday in protest of the company selling furniture to a government contractor that runs migrant detention facilities.
- After discovering that the company had sold $200,000 worth of bedroom furniture for a center that holds migrant children, over 500 employees wrote a letter asking for Wayfair to stop selling to this contractor and others that run similar operations.
- The protests were carried out after the company did not comply with the demands, but shortly before it started, Wayfair’s co-founders made a $100,000 donation to the Red Cross.
- While protestors appreciated the donation, they say that it does not address the issue at hand and have promised to continue this discussion with management at Wayfair.
Employees Speak Up
Employees at the home goods retailer Wayfair staged a walkout on Wednesday after learning that the company had sold $200,000 worth of bedroom furniture to a government contractor that runs a detention center for migrant children in Carrizo Springs, Texas.
The government contractor at the root of the issue is a nonprofit organization called BCFS, which made headlines last year for its harsh treatment of migrants. In September, Wayfair sold furniture to a BCFS facility in Tornillo, Texas that held more than 2,500 teenagers, according to the Washington Post. That camp was closed in January following “serious safety and health” concerns.
Aside from the contractors’ reputation, news of this Wayfair deal came amid outrage over reports that children were being denied basic items including toothpaste and soap at a detention center in Clint.
More than 500 employees signed a letter to executives after finding out about the contract with BCFS. In it, they urged the company to stop doing business with BCFS and other similar contractors that participate in the operation of migrant detention camps. They also called for the company to create a code of ethics for business- to business- sales.
For the record, here’s the letter the employees sent, which includes the details of the B2B order that wayfair fulfilled. pic.twitter.com/mfKs1krawu
— Dais (@sun_daiz) June 25, 2019
Management at Wayfair responded with their own letter, telling employees that they appreciated their passion, but defended their actions saying: “It is our business to sell to any customer who is acting within the laws of the countries within which we operate.”
I know I only have like 12 followers but look at this fucking shit. @Wayfair is supplying the concentration camps and their employees are pissed about it. @davidhogg111 you’re good at this shit. pic.twitter.com/zaed6gSVe6
— the braves bullpen of takes (@FizFashizzle) June 25, 2019
Social Media Users Weigh In
Soon after, a Twitter account appeared dedicated to organizing a walkout.
TOMORROW 6/26 1:30 PM WAYFAIR HQ WALKOUT
— wayfairwalkout (@wayfairwalkout) June 25, 2019
DM ME FOR DETAILS
News of the planned walkout spread quickly on social media on Tuesday and generated international attention, prompting many to call for a boycott of the company. Politicians even chimed in. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted about the walkout, saying: “Wayfair workers couldn’t stomach they were making beds to cage children.
Wayfair workers couldn’t stomach they were making beds to cage children.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 25, 2019
They asked the company to stop. CEO said no.
Tomorrow, they‘re walking out.
This is what solidarity looks like – a reminder that everyday people have real power, as long as we’re brave enough to use it. https://t.co/667abeLDTG
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is running for president, also weighed in saying, “The safety and well-being of immigrant children is always worth fighting for.”
I stand with the hundreds of @Wayfair employees who are planning to stage a walkout at their Boston headquarters tomorrow. The safety and well-being of immigrant children is always worth fighting for. https://t.co/L3hqbazX4l
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) June 25, 2019
Walkouts & Red Cross Donation
Several hundred employees protested in Copley Square near Wayfair’s Boston headquarters on Wednesday, including engineers, product managers, visual artists, and others.
In these dark times, seeing this constant stream of employees walk out of the Wayfair offices is making my heart soar.
— Lucky Tran (@luckytran) June 26, 2019
They are putting their values over personal risk.
They are showing the real power everyday people have.
Heroes!!❤️#WayfairWalkout pic.twitter.com/ytG4z57WIq
I have no idea how to count crowds, but here’s the view of #WayfairWalkout from the steps of Trinity Church on Copley Square 🌹✊️ pic.twitter.com/16oXKz0Qp2
— Natalie Shure (@nataliesurely) June 26, 2019
Wow! Look at the hundreds of people gathered in Copley Square, Boston in solidarity with @wayfairwalkout workers. Thank you!#WayfairWalkout pic.twitter.com/Gug53kJh6u
— Lucky Tran (@luckytran) June 26, 2019
There’s a couple of hundred people at the @Wayfair walkout in Boston. Hard to tell how many workers are here compared to other progressive activists. Some scenes: pic.twitter.com/tdps0wue9V
— Joey Garrison (@joeygarrison) June 26, 2019
The #WayfairWalkout has begun. Employees of the company are protesting the sale of $200,000 worth of bedroom furniture to the government for a border detention facility. WATCH LIVE; https://t.co/xbjN5rdXzH pic.twitter.com/I9TQRAr46O
— WCVB-TV Boston (@WCVB) June 26, 2019
But shortly before the protest began, Wayfair cofounders Steve Conine and Niraj Shah sent a note to employees. In it, they said they both “care a great deal about humanitarian issues,” and added, “We agree that there is a crisis at the border and people there are in need.”
The co-founders then told employees that the company would donate $100,000 to the Red Cros to support its “efforts to help those in dire need of basic necessities at the border.”
The Red Cross confirmed receiving the funds saying it was “grateful for Wayfair’s generous donation,” the Chicago Tribune reported. They also said it would put the money towards community-based organizations that are helping with the migrant crisis at the southern border.
Still, protest organizers say the donation does not actually address their concerns.
.@Wayfair stated in an email today that they will be making a donation of $100k to the @RedCross. This is great news! And proof that Wayfair can & does do good.
— wayfairwalkout (@wayfairwalkout) June 26, 2019
However, the Red Cross has nothing to do with these ICE-operated facilities.https://t.co/UehtJibmWF
According to the Boston Globe, one employee said she and other organizers walked out of a meeting with Shah on Tuesday when he refused to meet their demands.
Vox issued a similar report, saying that during that afternoon meeting, the co-founders discussed giving a large donation. “There are questions about which charity to give to avoid anyone being seen as too political,” the employee told Vox. “They said no outright to the ACLU. A lot of it was them not trying to commit to anything too specifically.”
At one point at least one employee asked Conine if the company could meet their two demands and Conine responded that he couldn’t give the answer they wanted to hear. Employees were not satisfied with those responses and pushed forward with the protest.
As far as what happens next, an organizer told the Cut that the walkout was considered a success, but said the demands have still not been met. The online magazine reported, “The protesters will continue speaking with management to try to ensure that their business won’t be profiting off of human misery.”
See what others are saying: (The Boston Globe) (Vox) (CNBC)
Business
Mental Health Startup Cerebral May Have Harmed Hundreds of Patients, Leaked Documents Reveal
Published
3 days agoon
June 29, 2022By
Chris Tolve
The company is being investigated by multiple federal agencies for its questionable practices, which have come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks.
Over 2,000 Incident Reports Shed Light on Recklessness
A Silicon Valley mental health startup called Cerebral may have harmed hundreds of patients by flagrantly disregarding medical standards, according to a cache of documents reviewed by Insider, as well as over 30 interviews with current or former employees by the outlet.
Founded in 2020, Cerebral provides mental health treatment to customers through talk therapy and medication for conditions such as depression, anxiety, insomnia, and ADHD.
With people quarantined during the pandemic, it became one of the largest virtual therapy firms in the United States, attracting some $462 million from investors.
Cerebral employees filed at least 2,060 incident reports during seven months in 2021, according to Insider. They show that the company enrolled patients with complex conditions like bipolar disorder, then assigned them to clinicians and other staff members with insufficient training, oversight, and support to treat such cases.
It also put dozens of patients on questionable treatment plans and misdiagnosed many others, the reports say, with company medical providers prescribing potentially lethal combinations of drugs or addictive drugs to patients with histories of addiction.
Additionally, many patients were left stranded without care for extended periods due to technology issues or the company’s failure to retain clinicians.
As a result, Cerebral shuffled patients from one provider to the next and even bungled their prescriptions, sometimes leading them to suffer drug withdrawal or take the wrong medication.
Patients Tell Their Stories
One patient reportedly spent two weeks waiting for a referral to a clinician, later saying she spent eight days in a psychiatric ward.
Another patient told CBS News she was prescribed a drug for her anxiety but afterward could not reach her prescriber for instructions on how to switch to the new medication safely.
“Any time I needed help, she was never available,” she said.
After she did not get a response for six days, she began taking the drug anyway, which caused her to break out in a rash.
“I messaged back,” she said, “letting them know it was spreading and getting worse, and they said that they were still trying to get a hold of that prescriber… They make it seem like they want to help, and then they get you, and then they’re gone.”
A Cerebral spokesperson told Insider that the reports did not highlight enough patients to accurately reflect the company.
“Any incident reports you obtained show Cerebral’s dedication to quality,” the spokesperson said. “You can’t take a relatively small group of incident reports and draw conclusions about our care.”
Two former senior employees told the outlet those reports were monitored by just a couple of people who had other responsibilities at the company, adding that leadership frequently pushed off solving the systemic issues flagged.
Cerebral’s practices are currently being investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission.
See what others are saying: (Business Insider) (CBS News) (Fierce Healthcare)
Business
Instagram Testing New Tools To Verify Users Are Over 18
Published
1 week agoon
June 23, 2022
The new tools include AI software that analyzes video footage of a person’s face to verify their age.
Instagram Cracks Down on Underage Users
Instagram is testing new features in the United States to verify the age of users who claim to be over 18 years old.
According to a statement from Instagram’s parent company, Meta, the tools will only apply to users who seek to change their age from under 18 to over 18. The platform previously asked for users to upload their ID for verification in this process, but on Thursday, it announced there will be two new methods for confirming age.
One of the strategies was referred to as “social vouching.” Using this option, people can request that three mutual Instagram followers over the age of 18 confirm their age on the platform.
The other method allows users to upload a video selfie of themselves to be analyzed by Yoti, third-party age verification software. Yoti then estimates a person’s age based on their facial features, sends that estimate to Meta, and both companies delete the recording.
According to Meta, Yoti cannot recognize or identify a face based on the recording and only looks at the pixels to determine an age. Meta said that Yoti “is the leading age verification provider for several industries around the world,” as it has been used and promoted by social media companies and governmental organizations.
Still, some question how effective it will be for this specific use. According to The Verge, while the software does have a high accuracy rate among certain age groups and demographics, data also shows it is less precise for female faces and faces with darker skin tones.
Issues With Kids on Instagram
Meta argues that it is important for Instagram to be able to discern who is and is not 18, as it impacts what version of the app users have access to.
“We’re testing this so we can make sure teens and adults are in the right experience for their age group,” the company’s statement said.
“When we know if someone is a teen (13-17), we provide them with age-appropriate experiences like defaulting them into private accounts, preventing unwanted contact from adults they don’t know and limiting the options advertisers have to reach them with ads,” it continued.
These changes come as Instagram has been facing increased pressure to address the way its app impacts younger users.
Only children 13 and older are allowed to have Instagram accounts, but the service has faced criticism for not doing enough to enforce this. A 2021 survey of high school students found that nearly half of the respondents had created a social media account of some kind before they were 13.
The company also recently came under fire after The Wall Street Journal published internal Meta documents revealing that the company knew that it harmed teens, including by worsening body image issues for young girls and women.
See what others are saying: (The Verge) (The Wall Street Journal) (Axios)
Business
Elon Musk Threatens to Fire Employees Unless They Work in Person Full-Time
Published
1 month agoon
June 1, 2022By
Chris Tolve
The world’s richest man in the world previously suggested that the popularity of remote work has “tricked people into thinking that you don’t actually need to work hard.”
“If You Don’t Show up, We Will Assume You Have Resigned”
On Wednesday, Electrek published two leaked emails apparently sent from Elon Musk to Tesla’s executive staff threatening to fire them if they don’t return to work in person.
“Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla,” he wrote. “This is less than we ask of factory workers.”
“If there are particularly exceptional contributors for whom this is impossible, I will review and approve those exceptions directly,” he continued.
Musk then clarified that the “office” must be a main office, not a “remote branch office unrelated to the job duties.”
“There are of course companies that don’t require this, but when was the last time they shipped a great new product? It’s been a while,” he wrote in the second email.
Later on Wednesday, a Twitter user asked Musk to comment on the idea that coming into work is an antiquated concept.
He replied, “They should pretend to work somewhere else.”
They should pretend to work somewhere else
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 1, 2022
The Billionaire Pushes People to Work Harder
Musk has a history of pressuring his employees and criticizing them for not working hard enough.
“All the Covid stay-at-home stuff has tricked people into thinking that you don’t actually need to work hard. Rude awakening inbound,” he tweeted last month.
Yes, but this is actually a good thing. It has been raining money on fools for too long. Some bankruptcies need to happen.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 27, 2022
Also, all the Covid stay-at-home stuff has tricked people into thinking that you don’t actually need to work hard. Rude awakening inbound!
Three economists told Insider that remote work during the pandemic did not damage productivity.
“Most of the evidence shows that productivity has increased while people stayed at home,” Natacha Postel-Vinay, an economic and financial historian at the London School of Economics, told the outlet.
Musk is notorious for criticizing lockdown mandates and went so far as to call them “fascist” during a Tesla earnings call in April 2020.
Not long before that, Tesla announced that it would keep its Fremont, California plant open in defiance of shelter-in-place orders across the state.
In an interview with The Financial Times last month, Musk blasted American workers for trying to stay home, comparing them to their Chinese counterparts whom he said work harder.
“They won’t just be burning the midnight oil. They will be burning the 3 a.m. oil,” he said. “They won’t even leave the factory type of thing, whereas in America people are trying to avoid going to work at all.”
That same day, Fortune published an article detailing how Tesla workers in Shanghai work 12-hour shifts, six days out of the week, sometimes sleeping on the factory floor.
See what others are saying: (CNBC) (Electrek) (Business Insider)

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