eBay Labor Troubles Continue: Ex-Employee Takes Retaliation Complaint To Ireland's Workplace Relations Commission
A former eBay employee has raised concerns about corporate retaliation to Ireland's Workplace Relations Commission, claiming he was forced to quit his customer support job after being unfairly punished for previous workplace complaints.
As reported by Raidió Teilifís Éireann, Eanna Donoghue maintains he was "unfairly treated" by management at eBay's European operations, to the point that he was forced to quit his job fielding priority customer service calls and emails from eBay’s high-value customers in March 2024, after nearly seven years' at the company.
Mr Donoghue quit on 5 March 2024, the day he was told a company appeals officer had decided to leave a written warning for "work avoidance" on his personnel file - effectively barring him from seeking promotion for a time, he said.
The tribunal heard Mr Donoghue's former line manager, Niamh Seoighe, had written to him on Thursday 21 December 2024 telling him that she had observed on a screen recording that he closed off a customer issue by email in a minute and 36 seconds, but left the page open for a few minutes.
"I couldn’t take it any longer," Mr Donoghue said, telling the WRC the reprimand for "work avoidance" followed a period when he had "people dying left, right and centre" in his personal life, including a friend who "went into the river in Navan".
"For some reason that was just ignored. A perfect record for seven years, and she [his line manager] still thought it was reasonable and fair to give me a warning on that incident," he said.
Mr Donoghue says he believes that the reprimand over the four-minute inactivity incident in January 2024, and informal "verbal counselling" in November 2023 for lateness were retaliatory activities linked to the fact he had filed grievances against two operations managers and raised complaints about "historical issues" at the company.
His former line manager, Ms. Seoighe, argues that the disciplinary action and written warning were valid and completely within policy, as Mr. Donoghue did not immediately respond to her request for an explanation of the idle time and she had to make an additional follow up request.
Cross-examining Mr Donoghue, Mr Curran said the claimant’s line manager Ms Seoighe, had asked him for an explanation for the idle time on 21 December 2023, and again later in January 2024.
Counsel said it took the further follow-up from Ms Seoighe for Mr Donoghue to reply with an email referring to the possibility that he was taking a personal call about the river fatality at the time in the correspondence, and the claimant agreed.
"You’ve admitted you broke the policy," counsel said.
"I told her that there was a man missing - my head [was] all over the place," Mr Donoghue said.
Mr Donaghue’s position during a disciplinary meeting had been that he "forgot to close the email" before taking a break, and that he might have gone to get a cup of tea, Mr Curran said.
"To this day I’m not sure," Mr Donaghue said. "I took a couple of calls in this time," he said.
"You did say you took a personal call about the person in the river," he said.
"I took a personal call, but I’m not sure if it was in that four minutes," the complainant said.
Ms Seoighe said in her evidence that she wrote to Mr Donoghue before Christmas that year looking for an explanation after observing on a screen recording from his computer that he had finished responding to the email but failed to mark himself as available for up to five minutes.
"It was call avoidance," she said. "If I’m going on the 'break unpaid’ ops code, I’m being skipped; it’s going to someone else on the team, they’re getting additional calls," she said.
"[For] idle time on an email, anything over 60 seconds is considered work avoidance," she said.
Her position was that the issue was exacerbated by Mr Donoghue's failure to use an hour specifically allotted for him to answer her queries on the downtime and because she "had to follow up several times".
While the complaint could potentially see Donoghue awarded back pay if found in his favor, he says he doesn't care about the money and would offer any compensation he may receive to charity.
Adjudicator Eileen Campbell gave Donoghue until April 30 to provide documentary evidence of his job-hunting efforts before she renders a decision.
This complaint puts new light on the podcast tour undertaken by eBay VP Global Customer Experience Derek Allgood last year touting eBay's phenomenal "people centric" customer service experience that strangely seemed to focus more on how eBay treats its employees rather than its buyer and seller customers.
Liz Morton
It's also not the only retaliation complaint the company is currently facing.
In another recent lawsuit filed against eBay, US-based ex-Senior Technical Product Manager, Amanda Bartolotta, claims she experienced harassment and discrimination at the hands of her manager, then was retaliated against and performance managed out of the company when she reported the conduct through internal employee relations and ethics departments.
Liz Morton
Employee rights firm, Don Bivens PLLC, is also investigating eBay for potential violations related to underperformance of assets tied to 401(K) benefits.
Liz Morton
And there's an ongoing class action lawsuit from sneaker authenticators who were employed at eBay's former Queens, NY facility, alleging the pay structure violated Fair Labor Standards Act and New York Labor Law requiring manual laborers to be paid on a weekly basis.
Liz Morton
These claims come as eBay faces increasing legal and regulatory scrutiny of their hiring and labor practices on multiple fronts, particularly since acquisition of Sneaker Con's authentication business in 2021 and collectible trading card marketplace TCGPlayer in 2022 added in-house physical labor-centric warehouse operations for the first time in the company's almost 30 year history.
Authentication workers at TCGPLayer voted to form the the first union in eBay history in March 2023, leading to the sudden departure of the company's Chief Accounting Officer when due diligence concerns were raised about the deal and multiple unfair labor practice claims were filed with the National Labor Relations Board.
Liz Morton
TCGUnion-CWA has continued their now 500 day+ long fight to get eBay to bargain in good faith and agree to a contract, filing more complaints with the NLRB along the way.
After 500+ days of bargaining, we are now discussing economics with the company.
— TCGunion-CWA (@TCGunionCWA) March 31, 2025
It's been over 3 years since members got a raise.
eBay does not provide a living wage.
Our members have been EXCLUDED from enhanced benefits, like screenings and bereavement.
The company recently undertook an "investor recommended" indepedendant Values Assessment, with the supposed goal of determining if eBay is living up to the principals of their published Human Rights Policy which includes respecting the rights of workers to organize as well as commitments to equal opportunity employment and providing a harassment and discrimination-free workplace.
Liz Morton
eBay's chosen independent assessor Davis Wright Tremaine LLP returned a positive report - an unsurprising result considering eBay explicitly excluded any topics related to working conditions, pay or benefits from the assessment.
The US Department of Justice is also keeping a close eye on the company as part of a deferred prosecution agreement regarding multiple federal felonies committed by eBay security employees who targeted journalists Ina and David Steiners of EcommerceBytes in 2019 with a shocking campaign of harassment and stalking aimed at influencing their coverage and outing an anonymous source known as FidoMaster/ unsuckEBAY on Twitter/X.
Liz Morton
Last year, eBay promoted Aaron Johnson to take on the role of Chief Ethics Officer, despite the fact that in his previous role at the company he was the main recipient of the infamous "Whatever. It. Takes" email from ex-Chief Communications Officer Steve Wymer, revealed in the cyberstalking case.
Given the criminal events that occurred following this email, it would appear neither Johnson nor then Chief Legal Officer Marie Oh Huber took action in their respective positions to make sure eBay's head of security, Jim Baugh, handled executive "frustration" within established legal bounds or reported this troubling and inappropriate communication from Wymer through any of the internal compliance or ethics channels which existed at that time - or, if they did, those channels clearly failed.
How are current employees supposed to feel knowing this is the person who may ultimately handle any internal reports or ethics complaints they may have?
If you're wondering why you may not have heard about eBay's union-busting activities or multiple lawsuit and labor complaints brought by employees, look no further than eBay's own admitted crisis comms strategies of seeking to hire people with a history of "preventing high-impact media coverage" - a chilling idea considering everything that has been revealed so far from the cyberstalking scandal.
Liz Morton
In addition to leveraging relationships with friendly journalists to promote positive coverage, powerful organizations often deploy "catch and kill" practices to prevent coverage of information they would prefer not to go public.
For example, a publisher may purchase exclusive rights to a story with the goal of burying rather than publishing it or an influential person may put pressure on a media company not to publish a story by either promising some quid pro quo benefit or threatening legal action.
Of note, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar's vast philanthropic efforts through Omidyar Network and other non-profits have been strategically funding freelance journalists for years through their Reporters in Residence program, focusing on big-picture economic issues and "Reimagining Capitalism" including "The Future of Workers and Work."
This program has awarded several grants to labor journalists with a specific focus on Worker Power like Kim Kelly, Hamilton Nolan, s.e. smith, and Brian Merchant - all of whom appear to have been curiously quiet about the first union in eBay's ~30 year history and ongoing labor troubles at the company.
Omidyar has funneled his eBay-made billions into a wide variety of world-shaping endeavors like Democracy Fund, Luminate Group, and First Look Media as well as founding The Intercept, which became famous for publishing Edward Snowden's NSA leaks before halting research on the files and locking them down from any further public access in March of 2019.
Omidyar Network also coincidentally funds a handful of "tech accountability" organizations like Accountable.US and Accountable Tech which regularly target Big Tech players like Meta/Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple for scrutiny - but somehow never seem to find a reason to mention anything about eBay.
Extra credit - search for said accountability org & eBay to see how often co Omidyar founded (where he made the 💰he uses for "philanthropy") gets even a fraction of the scrutiny other Big Tech players receive. 🔍
— Liz Morton ~ Value Added Resource (@ValueAddedRS) March 11, 2025
Odds are you won't find much🧐 - see also @accountabletech pic.twitter.com/2AiS3mYaW2
As part of those tech accountability initiatives, Omidyar Network also provides financial and other support for Big Tech whistleblowers, partnering with Ifeoma Ozoma to create The Tech Worker Handbook.
Omidyar Network
Omidyar backed Facebook/Meta whistleblower Frances Haugen in 2021 both directly and indirectly through non-profit org Whistleblower Aid, and it appears he may have connections to the PR firm behind current Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams as well.
Collin Anderson
Given the ongoing fallout of the cyberstalking case and clear indications of longstanding systemic labor issues, the fact we've yet to see any major public whistleblowing activity regarding eBay raises serious questions about Omidyar's influence across a wide array of media, labor, whistleblower and tech accountability organizations.
