When Monopolists Union-Bust: Antitrust Standards for Unilateral Labor Market Conduct

This article clarifies standards for evaluating whether a firm’s unilateral labor market conduct (wage suppression) violates antitrust law. It begins by analyzing suppression of collective bargaining (union busting) as conduct that can violate Section 2 of the Sherman Act. This article is the first to argue that wage suppression can violate Section 2 if the conduct (1) harms the competitive process within a labor market and increases monopsony, (2) tends to exclude law-abiding rivals from product or service markets, or (3) forecloses any adjacent market. Conduct that satisfies any of these three standards can be restrained with antitrust law. The antitrust standards presented are applicable to any kind of unilateral labor market conduct, including worker misclassification, wage theft, vertical restraints, restrictive covenants, employer-driven debt, or child labor.