EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS
Prague, Czechia
EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS 2022
On the basis of the monopsony power in labour market, American scientists have formulated recommendation for the policy makers (Azar, Marinescu, Steinbaum, 2019): • Policy-makers should make clear that the antitrust laws protect competition in both labour markets and product markets, and that documenting increases in consumer prices is not necessary to prove harm to competition within the meaning of the antitrust laws. • Reductions in wages, wage shares (as a percentage of company revenue), employment, hiring, or job quality should be prima facie evidence of harm to competition within the meaning of the antitrust laws and cannot be traded off or weighed against price or output effects in antitrust analysis. • Policy-makers could consider extending the antitrust labour provisions and protection over employees/workers who lack traditional employee status under the national laws. As Maggiolino suggests: “antitrust legislators and policy makers could aid gig workers and other under-protected self employed workers by excluding them and their collective agreements from the scope of application of competition law” (Maggiolino, 2022). In USA this topic has already been discussed, and in 2016 the soft law document “Antitrust Guidance for Human Resource Professionals” was issued, and in 2020 a document that takes under consideration the pandemic situation: Joint Antitrust Statement Regarding COVID-19 and Competition in Labor Markets. In all cases it should not be allowed to: lower wages below what would be charged in a competitive market, to wage-discriminate (i.e., to pay similar workers working in the same market significantly different wages), to impose disadvantageous nonwage contractual terms on workers without compensation, to restrict sharing information about wages and working conditions among employees or job applicants, to persuade or command employees to change employment contract into civil contract, to include arbitration or abusive clauses in employment contract. 5. Trade unions and protection of workers The right to collective bargaining is an example of one of the basic social rights recognized as such in the international, EU, and national legal systems of many countries. At the same time, it is the law that seems to best show the divergence of interests of entities involved in its implementation, i.e., employees and employers. Collective actions taken by employees to, for example, increase the level of remuneration in relation to the duties performed, are usually associated with inconveniences, often including economic losses on the part of the employer. On
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