Fighting Corporate Monopolies
We challenge corporations that use their power unfairly against workers, consumers, and small businesses and harm the working conditions and living standards of American workers. We provide legal and regulatory support to confront unfair abuses of power by corporations – from dominant tech companies to fast food franchisors to health care systems – and help workers achieve fairness and power on the job.
Confronting Corporate Labor Market Domination
SOC, together with SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, filed an antitrust complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice against the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) alleging UPMC has illegally monopolized multiple markets – including hospital labor markets – in Pennsylvania. Our complaint charges that UPMC illegally suppressed wages and staffing levels. We also have alleged that other practices, including violating labor law and imposing noncompete and similar restrictions on workers, are anticompetitive, and have been utilized by UPMC to illegally dominate workers in violation of federal antitrust laws.
Combating Unfair Restraints on Workers
We have been strong, active advocates at consumer protection and competition agencies to ensure workers are protected against unfair corporate treatment such as noncompete restrictions, misclassification, and work terms that require arbitration and prevent collective legal action by workers. Our comments, made in partnership with allied unions, have highlighted how these corporate abuses intensify the power imbalance between workers and companies and should be recognized as unfair and anticompetitive restraints on workers and labor markets.
SOC Fights Anticompetitive Corporate Acquisitions
SOC has fought aggressively against anticompetitive mergers that would enhance the power of companies that are already dominating and unfairly using their power in consumer and labor markets. SOC advocated to the FTC and publicly with a diverse community of independent filmmakers and directors to challenge Amazon’s acquisition of MGM, which only strengthened Amazon’s ability to exploit its platform power and squeeze artists and creative content producers. SOC also vigorously opposed UPMC’s acquisition of yet another community hospital in Western Pennsylvania, fighting UPMC’s destructive march across the state that has harmed so many workers, patients, and communities.
Advocating for Franchising Fairness
The SOC has a long history of aligning with small business owners opposing big corporate domination. In California we led a coalition to pass major franchise law reform that improved the rights of franchisees in important ways. We have also acted as a strong critic before the Federal Trade Commission of the current, anemic federal rules governing franchising. We submitted comments to the FTC that showed, through an exhaustive analysis of franchising agreements from across the economy, that under current rules, franchisors are able to impose unfair and costly contracts and contract changes on franchisees. These are abuses for which franchisee workers often pay the price in the form of rock-bottom wages. Our work also documented the specific costs these unfair franchising practices have for workers in subsequent FTC comments. Following these efforts, the FTC recently announced new protections for franchisees from many of these types of exploitation by franchisors.
Fighting Amazon’s Misconduct Towards Consumers
The SOC conducted an in-depth analysis of Amazon’s search display and advertising practices, resulting in a complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission and multiple state Attorneys General showing that Amazon has exploited its retail platform customers by saturating its product search pages with advertisements rather than organic search results. As reported by the Washington Post our analysis found that more than two-thirds of what Amazon presents as search results consists of ads, and further that Amazon fails to properly identify these ads, misleading customers into thinking they are viewing organic search results instead.
