No-Poaching Agreements as Antitrust Violations: Animation Workers Antitrust Litigation

Abstract

The last decade has witnessed a number of remarkable developments in public policy, laws, and law enforcement that are associated with failures of competition in US labor markets. These include: (1) enforcement actions and antitrust lawsuits with regard to explicit conspiracies to suppress competition in labor markets; (2) the documentation and forced abolition of franchise contracts that include worker "no-poaching" clauses; (3) explicit discussion of the regulation of mergers that affect labor market competition; and (4) legislation and regulation that affect "non-compete' and "non-solicit" clauses in employment contracts. In addition, there have been some highly visible examples of explicit collusion in labor markets, and these have raised questions about the extent to which competition has been damaged. This paper covers one such alleged conspiracy to reduce labor market competition among workers in the studio animation industry.3