{"id":201,"date":"2025-01-16T15:14:39","date_gmt":"2025-01-16T19:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/antitrustlaw\/?p=201"},"modified":"2025-01-16T15:14:40","modified_gmt":"2025-01-16T19:14:40","slug":"ftc-and-doj-issue-new-antitrust-guidelines-for-business-activities-affecting-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/antitrustlaw\/2025\/01\/16\/ftc-and-doj-issue-new-antitrust-guidelines-for-business-activities-affecting-workers\/","title":{"rendered":"FTC and DOJ Issue New Antitrust Guidelines for Business Activities Affecting Workers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The FTC and DOJ Antitrust Division issued joint <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/atr\/media\/1384596\/dl?inline\">Antitrust Guidelines for Business Activities Affecting Workers<\/a> purporting to explain how both the FTC and DOJ assess whether business practices affecting workers violate the antitrust laws. The new guidance is intended to replace the 2016 Antitrust Guidance for Human Resource Professionals and focuses on activity affecting competition in labor markets. In particular, the guidance stresses that agreements between businesses not to hire each other\u2019s workers or agreements to fix wages, including by use of a third-party algorithm, may constitute criminal violations of the antitrust laws. It also discusses other types of business practices that can carry antitrust risk, such as information sharing, non-compete agreements, and non-disclosure agreements. The agencies periodically issue non-binding guidance such as this one which is intended as readable, practical guidance that will assist businesses in complying with the existing antitrust laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The impact of the new guidance is unclear given the timing of the release and how it was passed by the FTC. The issuance comes just days before President-elect Trump is set to take office, and the FTC voted to issue the new guidance by a partisan 3-2 vote. In particular, current FTC Commissioner Andrew Ferguson, who President-elect Trump plans to appoint the new Chair of the FTC, issued a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ftc.gov\/system\/files\/ftc_gov\/pdf\/at-guidelines-for-business-activities-affecting-workers-ferguson-holyoak-dissent.pdf\">dissent<\/a> taking the position that \u201cthe Biden-Harris FTC announcing its views on how to comply with the antitrust laws in the future is a senseless waste of Commission resources\u201d because \u201cthe Biden-Harris FTC has no future.\u201d Fellow Republican Commissioner Melissa Holyoak joined in the dissent. It is possible that the newly constituted Commission under the new Trump Administration could withdraw this guidance and return to the 2016 Antitrust Guidance until it has the time to issue guidance reflecting the new Commission\u2019s enforcement position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The FTC and DOJ Antitrust Division issued joint Antitrust Guidelines for Business Activities Affecting Workers purporting to explain how both the FTC and DOJ assess whether business practices affecting workers violate the antitrust laws. The new guidance is intended to replace the 2016 Antitrust Guidance for Human Resource Professionals and focuses on activity affecting competition &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/antitrustlaw\/2025\/01\/16\/ftc-and-doj-issue-new-antitrust-guidelines-for-business-activities-affecting-workers\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;FTC and DOJ Issue New Antitrust Guidelines for Business Activities Affecting Workers&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":659,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11,10,22,16,84],"ppma_author":[8,9],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-antitrust","tag-competition","tag-doj","tag-ftc","tag-labor"],"authors":[{"term_id":8,"user_id":659,"is_guest":0,"slug":"sckulik","display_name":"Sarah O'Laughlin Kulik","avatar_url":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/antitrustlaw\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/68\/2024\/02\/kuliksaraholaughlin-1-100x100.jpg","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""},{"term_id":9,"user_id":660,"is_guest":0,"slug":"spmcconnell","display_name":"Sean P. McConnell","avatar_url":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/antitrustlaw\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/68\/2025\/10\/mcconnellsean-100x100.jpg","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/antitrustlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/antitrustlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/antitrustlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/antitrustlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/659"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/antitrustlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/antitrustlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/antitrustlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/antitrustlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/antitrustlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/antitrustlaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}