According to the US Justice Department today, the largest online marketplace in the world has agreed to refrain from entering into illegal arrangements with other companies to not hire each other's employees by paying the state of California $3.75 million. Bloomberg said the latest development would bring an end to a federal crackdown on illegal hiring practices in the Silicon Valley.
EBay's settlement reportedly follows the accords by Apple Inc, Google Inc, Intel Corp and Adobe Systems Inc, of whom are its co-defendants in an employee lawsuit that claimed that the technology companies had colluded into suppressing salaries of its workers by not hiring each other's employees. A person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that all of the defendants had agreed to settle the case for $324 million.
In eBay's case, the online marketplace allegedly conspired with Intuit Inc to not hire the latter's employees. The Justice Department said that because of the agreement between the two companies, it had limited competition and caused the workers to lose opportunities to get better jobs.
The head of the Justice Department's antitrust division, Bill Baer, told the news agency that apart from eBay's, his office has no other active investigations on companies regarding its recruitment practices.
In a conference call with reporters, Baer said about the federal agency's efforts on the hiring scandal, "The behavior here was blatant and egregious. Part of what we've done here is make it abundantly clear to high-tech companies that the antitrust laws apply to them. You can't innovate your way around the antitrust laws."
In a federal court filing in San Jose, California, eBay fell short of admitting that it did violate the law, which is part of the accord. In a separate statement, the company said, "EBay continues to believe that the policy that prompted this lawsuit was acceptable and legal. EBay competes aggressively to attract and retain the best talent, while conforming to the hiring-practices standards established by the Department of Justice in prior hiring-related cases."
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