Gig economy workers fighting for higher pay and better working conditions through protests and grassroots organizing face yet another obstacle in their campaigns: U.S. antitrust law.
Federal statutes aimed at promoting competition and preventing monopolies leave out gig workers, classified as independent contractors, from protections for unionizing or other group actions.
Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan is pushing to change that through legislation or joint guidance with the U.S. Justice Department, which would be a more straightforward if legally risky way of clarifying that current antitrust exemptions for traditional unions can extend to gig workers. The agencies plan to ...