This chapter focusing on US law first sets out the underlying rule against horizontal price-fixing—and many other forms of horizontal economic coordination beyond firm boundaries—that most directly implicates collective action among workers and other small players in the economy. It then briefly sets out the legal landscape of the various antitrust exemptions that can nevertheless shield such collective action from scrutiny: the labor exemption (exploring the relationship between the law in this area and the contemporary ‘fissured workplace’), the state action exemption, the various agricultural exemptions, and the lack of an exemption for small and medium-sized enterprises (despite sporadic movements toward such an exemption). While primarily descriptive, the chapter highlights the legal construction of economic coordination and competition from the ground-up—rather than preexisting ‘market competition’ regulated by law—and the largely invisible background role of firm-based coordination as the most significant antitrust exception of them all.

As an introduction to the volume, this chapter begins by reframing the commonly held notion that labor and competition law exist in a kind of natural conflict, both historically and conceptually. It also draws together themes from many of the other ‘framing’ chapters, which largely present issues that cut across jurisdictions and international frameworks. Finally, it puts the geographical coverage of the volume in perspective, highlighting related areas of inquiry yet to be explored.

Arguments against the labor exemption to antitrust law are nothing new. While it is unlikely that the labor exemption will be literally repealed, the political orientation that the argument for repeal represents has, in effect, already won. The argument is important not because the obstacles that antitrust law places in the way of labor organizing are the most significant challenges facing American labor today (though they are important). Rather, it is important because it is perhaps the purest text for the underlying worldview that has driven the more general legal hostility toward the economic coordination rights of working people over the last few decades, which several other chapters in this volume set out in greater detail.