FTC Launches Joint Labor Task Force to Protect American Workers

Today, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson directed the FTC to form a Joint Labor Task Force that will work to prioritize rooting out and prosecuting deceptive, unfair, and anticompetitive labor-market practices that harm American workers.

Pursuant to a memorandum issued by Chairman Ferguson, the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, Bureau of Consumer Protection, Bureau of Economics, and Office of Policy Planning are directed to work together to carry out a variety of responsibilities. The task force will focus on, for example, prioritizing investigations and prosecutions of deceptive, unfair, or anticompetitive labor market conduct and coordinating all such actions across the Bureaus, creating information-sharing protocols across the FTC’s Bureaus and offices to exchange best practices for uncovering and investigating such conduct, and promoting research regarding harmful labor market practices to inform the FTC and the public.

A healthy labor market is critical to the country’s success. But deceptive, unfair, and anticompetitive labor practices are widespread. They negatively affect workers across all types of industries by limiting their mobility and ability to earn a living. Such harmful practices come in a variety of forms. For example, the Chairman’s directive highlights no-poach, non-solicitation, or no-hire agreements, noncompete agreements, wage-fixing agreements, deceptive job advertising such as misleading earnings claims, deceptive business opportunities, misleading franchise offerings, and collusion or unlawful coordination on DEI employment metrics.

The Chairman’s directive seeks to harmonize the FTC’s law-enforcement efforts on behalf of workers to ensure that the FTC prioritizes labor issues in both its consumer-protection and competition matters.