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Jonathan R. Harkavy has taught labor and employment law at Wake Forest School of Law and corporate finance at Duke Law School and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law. During the summers of 2018 and 2019, he has been a visiting research fellow in the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School.
Charlotte Garden’s insightful essay at Take Care about how antitrust laws are being used as a bludgeon against union collective action immediately brings to my mind Andrew Strom’s OnLabor post about the so-called “Powell Memo.” My hope is that considering these two posts together will fortify what both OnLabor contributors have to say.
To refresh, when Lewis Powell was at the height of his influence as a private practitioner in 1971, he wrote a memorandum for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that is now widely regarded as the blueprint for building a collective voice for the American business community. Witness Powell’s words about collective or unified action:
“But independent and uncoordinated activity by individual corporations, as important as this is, will not be sufficient. Strength lies in organization. . . and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.”
Fast forward nearly fifty years from the Powell memorandum: We can now better appreciate (recalling Lewis Powell’s own words) what Charlotte Garden wrote about—the collective might of the business community wielding, of all things, the antitrust laws to sap the “strength [that] lies in organization” and hamstring the “united action” of working people.
And so, it is ironic in the extreme, if not downright hypocritical, for the premier exponent and beneficiary of collective action—the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—to attempt (whether by the antitrust laws or otherwise) to deny to individuals who work for its members the benefits of a collective voice and unified action.
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July 2
University of California strikes end while legal dispute continues; Disneyland workers raise awareness with park visitors; bus workers in Alabama set example for labor policy
July 1
Labor law impacts of Loper Bright and Jarkesy rulings; Unions push for workforce board represntation.
June 30
Explaining the turnaround in Starbucks-union negotiations; overtime rule implementation against Texas enjoined; California reforms PAGA
June 28
Gig driver classification deal reached in Massachusetts; Amazon drivers in Illinois strike over ULP; CEO pay accelerates.
June 27
The economy and immigration expected to play a central role in the upcoming presidential debate and Washington gets involved in AI regulation of the entertainment industry.
June 26
California judge fines companies for child labor violations; IATSE reaches tentative deal with studios; Texas judge likely to block Biden Administration's overtime rule