On February 26, new Federal Commerce Fee (FTC) Chair Andrew Ferguson introduced the creation of the Joint Labor Activity Drive, persevering with former Chair Lina Khan’s departure from what is called the buyer welfare customary.
Congress established the FTC in 1914 to stop unfair competitors and misleading enterprise practices. This has primarily meant “defending People of their function as shoppers,” in accordance with Ferguson. The FTC enforces the Clayton Antitrust Act, which outlawed worth discrimination between clients, unique dealing, interlocking directorates, and mergers or acquisitions that “considerably scale back competitors.”
However Khan was extra fascinated about People’ function as producers than shoppers. In 2022 she signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Nationwide Labor Relations Board to “shield staff towards unfair strategies of competitors, unfair or misleading acts or practices, and unfair labor practices,” corresponding to restrictive contract provisions. In August 2023, Khan signed an identical MOU with the Division of Labor recognizing each businesses’ shared dedication to defending staff from misleading earnings claims, restrictive noncompete and nondisclosure contracts, and the “impression of labor market focus.”
Alden Abbott, the FTC’s common counsel from 2018–2021, opposed the MOUs. Abbott argued in September 2023 that labor market oversight is “far-removed from the FTC’s statutory mandate to concentrate on combating impediments to competitors and shopper safety [and] would cut back the funding accessible to assault fraudulent and clearly anticompetitive acts.”
Khan’s FTC went additional, making an attempt to ban noncompete agreements in April 2024, describing them as an unfair technique of competitors in violation of the FTC Act. Ferguson dissented on authorized grounds, arguing that the Fee doesn’t possess the facility “to declare categorically illegal a species of contract that was lawful when the Federal Commerce Fee Act was adopted.”
Although Ferguson opposed banning noncompetes, he nonetheless identifies them as certainly one of 12 anticompetitive labor practices beneath FTC jurisdiction. Ferguson has directed his new Joint Labor Activity Drive to “prioritize investigation and prosecution” of such practices and to advocate regulatory and legislative modifications that might tackle them.
Ferguson’s endorsement of the 2023 joint merger tips, alongside together with his hostility to the tech trade and help for imposing the anti–worth discrimination Robinson-Patman Act, all counsel a continuation of Khan’s activist antitrust ideology. The Joint Labor Activity Drive is but extra proof.
This text initially appeared in print beneath the headline “New FTC Boss Identical because the Previous Boss.”
