Commonweal- Putting Antitrust to Work
Senior legal analyst Daniel Hanley writes about how we shall ensure labor benefits from the veritable renaissance of long-dormant antitrust enforcement in the US under the Biden Administration.
In January, the Department of Justice (DOJ) sued Google in a landmark antitrust case the likes of which have not been seen since the breakup of telecommunications conglomerate AT&T in the 1980s. The DOJ seeks to end the company’s stranglehold over the digital advertising market, freeing up an essential revenue source for the tottering journalism industry in the process. In announcing the lawsuit, assistant attorney general Jonathan Kanter quoted a Google employee who referred to the company’s ad exchange as an “authoritarian intermediary.”
This recent action is just the latest example of a veritable renaissance of long-dormant antitrust enforcement in the United States. The Biden administration has prioritized the fight against corporate concentration, and the public now widely—and rightly—considers concentrated corporate power a root cause of inequality and a corrosive agent in our political system. Public support has also spurred antitrust enforcement actions by both the DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against dominant corporations that use their power to control vast swaths of the American economy.
Labor is thought to be a primary beneficiary of the antitrust renewal. Antitrust is now regarded by policymakers as a potent tool that can buttress and enhance the power of workers, securing fair wages, improving working conditions, and ultimately fortifying the gains made in the most favorable American labor market in generations. It might be surprising, therefore, that labor groups have been hesitant to fully embrace this philosophical transition. Some labor organizations, for example, have found themselves on the opposite side of antitrust cases initiated by the federal government.
But there are very good historical reasons for labor organizations’ hesitancy to embrace antitrust. Since its inception in 1890, antitrust has, despite its original intention, been deployed as a legal weapon by the government and corporations against collective labor organizing. This distorted form of “antitrust” enforcement has facilitated strike breaking, corporate consolidation, coercive worker contracts, and misclassification of workers as independent contractors. The history of antitrust shows that, despite real progress, more needs to be done by federal enforcers and Congress to convince workers and organizers that antitrust is a friend of labor.
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