Jenny Kane/AP Photo
Kim Cordova, president of UFCW Local 7, speaks about the Kroger and Albertsons merger during a news conference outside the federal courthouse, August 26, 2024, in Portland, Oregon.
There are, I don’t doubt, any number of Econ 101 classes whose textbooks say that the interests of consumers and workers are necessarily counterposed. When workers get a raise, the increased costs get passed on to consumers; that’s just the way of the world.
This narrative is complicated, of course, by the fact that virtually all workers are also consumers, and that the vast majority of consumers are either workers or members of workers’ families (though knowledge of this nuance may require taking Econ 202 or, alternatively, living in the real world). In recent decades, this narrative has also been complicated by the fact that the level of corporate concentration and the growth of monopolies and monopsonies have reached the point that the typical worker/consumer is disadvantaged in both of those identities.
The federal government has long had departments and agencies established to protect the interest of workers and consumers. The Federal Trade Commission was established in 1914; the National Labor Relations Board in 1935; the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice in 1919; and the Department of Labor in 1913. But it’s only in the last two years, confronted with proposed mergers that would damage the interests of both workers and consumers, that all four of these agencies have begun working together to oppose such combinations. And since it’s now timely to discuss President Biden’s legacy, it’s clear that it’s been his appointees to all those agencies and departments who deserve a great deal of credit for tackling many of the problems of monopolized capitalism.
Yesterday, Labor Secretary Julie Su, FTC Chair Lina Khan, DOJ Antitrust Division chief Jonathan Kanter, and NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo signed a memo of understanding “to strengthen worker protections and fair competition by collaborating on labor issues in antitrust merger investigations.” It comes in the midst of a federal trial in Oregon on the proposed merger of two huge supermarket chains, Albertsons and Kroger, which have been sued by the FTC for violating antitrust laws. As is standard in such cases, the FTC is arguing that the merger will lead to higher prices. As is not standard in such cases, the FTC is breaking new ground by arguing that the merger will also lead to a less competitive job market for supermarket employees, damaging their pocketbooks not only as a result of higher prices but also as a result of lower wages.
Together, the two chains currently employ 700,000 workers, and alongside Walmart and Costco, account for roughly half of all grocery sales. Most of those workers are represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers, which has voiced two major complaints against the proposed hookup: First, that consolidation of four huge chains into three reduces the availability of job options for supermarket workers; and second, that the antitrust requirements of the merger require the two companies to sell about 11 percent of their stores to a third company, which in this case is C&S Wholesale Grocers, a company with little experience running supermarkets. The UFCW is concerned that its members who’ll be working for C&S have no assurance that C&S will succeed in its new venture, putting the workers there at risk of losing their jobs.
But it’s the FTC, not the UFCW, that can bring suit on antitrust grounds. The Commission’s argument—that concentration in the job market is every bit as anti-competitive as concentration in the retail sales market—is a new one for the FTC, but the decades-long wave of corporate concentration has been a documented factor in the decades-long wage stagnation of most of the American workforce. It’s to help make that case, and other such cases that will arise, that the NLRB and the DOL are joining forces with the FTC and Justice in the antitrust wars.
This isn’t the first time that this alliance has come together. Earlier this year, the FTC ruled that the noncompete agreements that keep at least 20 percent of the American workforce from leaving their job for a different employer in the same field or same region, and impose a financial penalty if they do, were also violations of the antitrust laws that promote free competition—in this case, for workers. In recent weeks, that ban has been upheld by a federal court in Pennsylvania and struck down by a federal court in (predictably) Texas (setting up a ruling down the line from the notoriously anti-worker Supreme Court, alas). Coming at it from the worker rights side of the government, NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo told agency attorneys last year to contest such noncompetes as infringements on basic worker rights, and an administrative judge has since struck down the provision in one case. (This ruling will eventually make its way up to the Board itself, which could make it binding national policy.)
Noncompetes make a certain amount of sense when they prohibit workers from taking their employers’ trade secrets to a rival company, but there are laws on the books explicitly banning divulgences of trade secrets, and very few workers are in possession of them in any case. In recent years, however, it’s become clear that there are many thousands of hairdressers, retail clerks, plumbers et al. who, largely unknowingly, have such provisions in their contracts. For which reason, the government’s agency to protect workers’ rights and the government’s agency to encourage free competition have both moved against noncompetes, noting that the indentured servitude of the colonial era didn’t really survive after the 1787 creation of the new republic.
So workers’ rights are now the concern of the agencies promoting competition, and antitrust is now the concern of the agencies promoting workers’ rights. This new synergy is a distinct creation of Bidenism (influenced by Sandersism and Warrenism). It is not even remotely a component of Trumpism, of course, which is one more reason, if you need one, to vote a certain way this November.
