I think it's safe to say that it was some rogue eBay employees doing the harassing rather than official eBay sanctioned harassment - but there must be something wrong in eBay communication/policy for this to have happened.
What astounds me is how incompetent this all was - a combination of online and real world harassment is going to get law enforcement involved and the paper and online trail is going to get you found out.
Why is this safe to say? When does harassment change from "just some employees" to "official eBay sanctioned" (whatever that means). It's people making up eBay, and those people harassing. That makes it harassment by eBay.
The CEO wasn't charged. There was tons of evidence in this case of what the people did. If the CEO had any part in the activity the Federal prosecutors (charging eBay CEO would be like catnip to a Federal prosecutor) would have offered a deal to one of the five to act as a witness.
It's deplorable that eBay and other large firms run 'anti PR' campaigns against their detractors - but there's a big step from that to physically threatening people and sending pigs heads to them through the post.
Yeah, no, I don't buy that. When the CEO sends an order to "take [them] down" and then this happens, that's no accident. All that means is the CEO is adept at "not knowing anything."
Props to the Natick police for what seems like good, competent police work. A lot of local police would have blown this off.
> Props to the Natick police for what seems like good, competent police work.
Agreed. But the fact that the paper trail was so easy to follow makes me think this wasn't a corporate conspiracy - you don't need to break the law like they did to intimidate people - look what Amazon did when the Alabama union vote was happening. Any large company can stay within the law and get away with murder.
If I was a CEO and really wanted to do this illegally, I'd hire an external 'security' company to do the dirty work. The payment to them would be legitimate for some security consultancy/background checks etc and the security company would use 3rd party contractors who know they'll get paid to keep their mouths shut. You don't use your own employees charging items to their company Amex.
Did you post the right link? That seems to validate my point.
They broke no law that means they will be meaningfully fined or someone is serving jail time. They intimidated voters and behaved appallingly but NLRB called it "misconduct" and they "committed objectionable conduct". The worst case for Amazon seems to be that the vote will be reheld and their PR might possibly suffer.
Even if you believe the CEO's claims that he just wanted a counter PR campaign or something, the person orchestrating it ran a team named "Global Security and Resiliency" and ebay employees were having cars and hotels paid for.
I think execs, hotels and cars go beyond "Oh isn't it terrible what these rogue employees did" and ebay shares some liability. If a company decides to dump toxic waste in the river because the CEO commented that he was unhappy with how much cleanup cost, they don't get to hide behind "oh, well the CEO was just frustrated with costs, its really some rogue maintenance manager and his employees decided to redirect the waste so we're not at all liable, just the employees"
I think it's safe to say that it was some rogue eBay employees doing the harassing rather than official eBay sanctioned harassment - but there must be something wrong in eBay communication/policy for this to have happened.
What astounds me is how incompetent this all was - a combination of online and real world harassment is going to get law enforcement involved and the paper and online trail is going to get you found out.