This Rubin guy was no doubt a creep. From the NYT article:
"The suit included a screenshot of an August 2015 email Mr. Rubin sent to one woman. “You will be happy being taken care of,” he wrote. “Being owned is kinda like you are my property, and I can loan you to other people.”"
Yikes!
I don't understand why Americans are so concerned with what happens in somebody else's bedroom. I don't give a single flying f about what two consenting adults decide to do in a bedroom. There are all sorts of sexual kinks that I find disgusting and sometimes disturbing - but it turns out it's not really any of my business. The second you introduce a non-consenting adult, or someone not old enough to consent, then we've got a problem.
Otherwise - why do you care? It's none of your business.
When your boss is sleeping with one of your co-workers, how do you know that they are not in a quid-pro-quo relationship?
This isn't an American thing - this is a workplace thing.
If you're a manager, there's seven billion other people in the world, who don't report to you. You'll probably find your soulmate, or whatever the hell you're looking for - outside of your reporting chain.
And as I've said in just about every post I've made, he should've been fired for sleeping with a subordinate. There are countless reasons that's not OK. I was responding to and quite obviously referring to the guy making a big deal about him telling someone he "owns them" - or whatever terminology he used. Do I think that's disgusting? Sure. But that's between him and whomever he has that relationship with. If she's consenting and willing, so be it, not my place to judge.
As others have already pointed out, any relationship with an employee in that kind of environment is exploitative by nature.
Unless you've got info beyond what was in the times report, you're making a TON of assumptions about the nature of the relationship.
As I said, it's wrong and he should be fired for having relations with a subordinate no matter what the circumstances were. But to dive Right into "do this if you want to stay employed" when you don't even know which party initiated the relationship is a bit unfair.
Unless Google or the woman in question come forward with more info, I don't think it's at all fair to just assume the worst about everyone involved.
Because that seems to go somewhat beyond the usual standard. And it wouldn't even be helpful, unless you follow it up with a demand of DNA samples and expert witnesses.
FWIW: the parent comment wasn't assuming anything–they just more or less gave you the definition of coercion.
I doubt Rubin would have had the same behaviour with male subordinates, so that's a difference in treatment based on gender (woman who have to sleep with him to get equal treatment, or super devil advocate here, against men unable to "sleep to the top").
The reason companies have clear rules against this - which should be super easy to enforce - is because if you are in a position of power over someone, even if it was a hypothetical case of not abusing power, the subordinate can't tell so may feel coerced. If your underling feels coerced, they are. That it was unintentional is not relevant. Note, this is distinct from consent, which may or may not apply. Certainly if it's consent related the company should be forwarding to police.
In addition to that it seems like there is a large body of evidence of what is at minimum inappropriate behaviour of any employee, let alone the management and executive tiers. Any of which should have been firable.