Understanding Recent Changes In Antitrust Labor Guidelines

Is your business keeping up with the changing rules of workplace competition? Although the Biden-era Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) pursued initiatives aimed to upend common law workplace mobility restraints, the status of those initiatives was paused and will potentially be derailed.

On Jan. 16, 2025, federal regulators released new guidelines that could affect everything from how employers hire and pay workers to how employers structure training agreements and franchise relationships. Whether employing traditional workers, using independent contractors, or both, these initiatives posed changes to day-to-day operations and created new risks for certain workplace restraints. Yet, on Mar. 7, the FTC switched course and requested that the federal courts deciding the fate of these initiatives pause those cases while the agency reconsidered its stance on non-competition covenants in the employment realm.