The Massachusetts Majority Independent Expenditure PAC is getting some attention as a beard for the political interests of Governor Charlie Baker. So who’s giving? At the top of the list are Wayfair’s founders at $50,000 each. What’s the politics policy over there, anyway?
I ask because Wayfair CEO Niraj Shah declared in September that he’d about had it with employees who have a political thought in their otherwise very large brains. In reporting from Boston Magazine and Boston Business Journal, Shah told a panel at the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel that one of two criteria for new hires is “The second thing we look for — equally important — is the cultural fit. So we’re bringing in non-political, you know, highly collaborative, just very driven and ambitious.”
Hours after Shah’s remarks Wayfair corporate PR walked back his statement, or as Spencer Buell of Boston Magazine put it, “fired back.” Misinterpreted, etc.
But the damage was done with non-corporate-flack sentient beings recalling actual political activism last June when Wayfair employees walked out “in protest of their company’s contract selling bedding to an immigrant detention center at the U.S.-Mexico border” as reported by Spencer Buell and Alyssa Vaughn in Boston Magazine.
It’s been a busy time for Shah PR-wise, as he was also the subject of one of the Boston Globe’s puff pieces on corporate heroes in the Bold Types series, sponsored by Koch Industries. But perhaps the Shah profile helped UnKoch my Globe, because Bold Types seems to have gone away.
Back in June in response to the walkout and letter signed by 500 employees, Wayfair donated $100,000 (tax deductible) to the Red Cross, which was sort of nice but Red Cross has little to do with aiding immigrants at the border.
I mention that amount because Shah and Wayfair co-founder Steven Conine (both on the Forbes 400 richest Americans list) combined to give $100,000 to Massachusetts Majority IEPAC.
Perhaps Wayfair will announce a new corporate policy on political activities: Writing very large checks to curry favor with the governor is good activism. Risking your jobs in support of immigrants being mistreated by the American government is very bad activism. Act accordingly.
[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about money, not furniture.]