In brief
On 9 July 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order (EO) announcing his administration’s commitment to increasing vigorous antitrust enforcement. At the one-year anniversary of the EO, a recent flurry of enforcement efforts signals that the Department of Justice (DOJ) remains vigilant in carrying out the EO’s initiatives, especially in the labor markets.
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In 2016, the DOJ Antitrust Division and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published guidance signaling that anti-competitive conduct in the labor markets could violate the antitrust laws. This guidance warned that competing employers’ agreements to fix employees’ compensation or not to poach each other’s employees may be subject to criminal prosecution.
More recently, the EO called on federal agencies to scrutinize anti-competitive conduct and pursue more aggressive enforcement. The EO promoted a “whole-of-government approach” to competition policy encouraging agencies to protect competition using their statutory authority.
A health care staffing company and its former regional manager are nearing a resolution for charges of conspiring with a competing staffing company to suppress wages for Las Vegas school nurses.
On 30 March 2021, a federal grand jury returned an indictment in the US District Court for the District of Nevada charging the…
