U.S.
This year saw significant developments in antitrust scrutiny of labor issues, including wage fixing, non-competes, and no-poach agreements. Applying the antitrust laws to labor markets and consideration of labor effects in antitrust enforcement was a signature effort of the Biden administration competition agencies, with a number of major rulemaking and policy initiatives coming at the end of the term. The Trump administration has either explicitly or constructively rolled back Biden-era rules and policies, but it has continued to make investigations into labor markets a priority, to enforce against agreements among employers on a case-by-case basis, and to consider labor effects in merger challenges. State and private plaintiffs have continued to complement federal enforcement.
In January 2025, just before the transition of presidential administrations, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued an FTC Enforcement Policy Statement on Exemption of Protected Labor Activity from Antitrust Liability, which explained its view that the antitrust laws cover organizing and collective bargaining activity regardless of a worker’s formal classification. FTC Commissioners Andrew Ferguson and Melissa Holyoak issued a terse dissenting statement, effectively dismissing the Policy Statement as unreflective of agency views and policies going forward under the Trump administration.
Two days later, the FTC and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) jointly adopted the Antitrust Guidelines for Business Activities Affecting Workers (2025 Guidelines). The 2025 Guidelines identify numerous agreement types, including no-poach, no-hire, and non-compete, and practices, such as sharing competitive sensitive wage information, as potentially unlawful. Again the two Republican FTC commissioners dissented and characterized the statement as reflecting the defunct views of the Biden-era agencies. Neither the Guidelines nor the Policy Statement have been formally withdrawn, but firms should be cautious in relying on any particular statements of policy from the Biden administration and look instead to the agencies’ practice under the Trump administration.
The Trump administration agencies have continued to make labor a priority, and, notwithstanding the Ferguson and Holyoak dissents noted above, new agency leadership has carried forward certain fixtures of Biden-era policy, such as a firm position that the antitrust laws apply equally to labor markets and that wage-fixing and no-poach agreements may be pursued criminally. For instance, Chair Ferguson announced a Joint Labor Task Force in February 2025 that was tasked to prioritize investigation of specific types of labor-market conduct, many of which were named in the 2025 Guidelines, including wage-fixing, no-poach, non-solicitation, and no-hire agreements.
The Trump administration has remained committed to seeking criminal liability for certain forms of agreement among competitors. This year, the DOJ secured its first guilty verdict in a criminal labor-market antitrust prosecution (the indictment was obtained during the Biden administration). In April 2025, a Nevada federal jury convicted Eduardo Lopez, a former executive of a home health staffing agency, for leading a three-year conspiracy to suppress wages paid to home health clinicians in the Las Vegas area and for failing to disclose the criminal antitrust investigation during the sale of his home health staffing company. The DOJ’s evidence included contemporaneous messages from Lopez about a “mutual agreement” to “stay within the same hourly rate” as his competitors. In November 2025, Lopez was sentenced to 40 months in custody and $550,000 in criminal fines. Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater described the agreement as a “nakedly unlawful attempt[] at unjustly profiting off American workers” and promised that the DOJ would “zealously” prosecute similar conduct going forward.
Trump administration agencies have also continued to consider possible labor market effects in merger analysis and have obtained settlement terms aimed at mitigating them. In August 2025, the DOJ settled a challenge brought in November 2024 under the Biden administration to UnitedHealth Group’s $3.3 billion acquisition of Amedisys. The DOJ alleged that the two companies viewed each other as close competitors for home health and hospice nurses and that the merger was presumptively illegal in hundreds of local markets for home health and hospice nurse labor, encompassing at least 8,000 nurses in 24 states. In addition to requiring divestiture of 164 home health, hospice, and palliative care locations, the settlement required the parties to divest the employment contracts of 1,800 employees, including the specialized nursing and healthcare professionals alleged to be at risk from the combined hiring power of the merged firm.
The agencies have followed through on labor enforcement actions initiated under the Biden administration and have taken similarly strong positions on the application of the antitrust laws in labor markets. But the new agency leadership differs sharply from the former in the scope of enforcement tools that are available. In April 2024, the Biden-era FTC voted to exercise its rule-making authority, well established for consumer protection matters but more controversial with respect to competition, to issue a rule broadly prohibiting non-compete agreements.
A district court in the Northern District of Texas issued a nationwide injunction blocking the rule in August 2024. The Biden administration’s FTC appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. In September 2025, the Trump administration’s FTC abandoned the appeal before a decision was issued, effectively withdrawing the rule. But, the day after, the FTC announced a settlement with a pet cremation business that had allegedly required employees to enter into 12-month non-competes, reinforcing agency leadership’s commitment to case-by-case enforcement.
Federal enforcers have not found much success with no-poach agreement enforcement, but state attorneys general have made some progress in this area. In December 2025, the California Attorney General settled its suit against Packers Sanitation Services, Inc. (PSSI). The AG had alleged PSSI had entered into illegal no-poach agreements with its meatpacking and food processing customers under California Unfair Competition Law and its state-level Non-Compete Law. Under the settlement, PSSI will provide notice to employees and customers regarding its discontinued use of the unlawful provision in addition to paying $500,000 in civil penalties. As in other areas—see for instance, our AI Industry Preview—state enforcers are expected to increasingly seek to fill perceived gaps in federal legislation or enforcement activity.
Private plaintiffs have found some success this year litigating labor antitrust claims as well, with an emphasis on no-poach agreements. A U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit panel revived civil no-poach claims filed by naval engineers, finding that the statute of limitations had not expired because claims of a secret unwritten agreement were sufficient to allege fraudulent concealment. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida ruled in April 2025 that a proposed class of Burger King employees had sufficiently alleged that Burger King colluded with its franchisees by using no-hire agreements that suppressed wages and employment mobility for six months post-employment. The decision comes after the case was remanded to the lower court following a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit decision reversing a prior district court ruling that the plaintiffs had failed to allege that Burger King and its franchisees were separate economic actors. The case is currently set for trial in 2027.
The Trump administration agencies have cast doubt on the broad policy statements issued by the Biden-era agencies on labor markets and have strongly rejected the exercise of the FTC’s rulemaking authority in the former non-compete rule. However, the Trump-era agencies have continued to make enforcement in labor markets a priority and have continued to investigate and mitigate labor effects in mergers. We expect this focus on labor to continue and for ongoing enforcement activity to reveal new leaderships’ views. State and private enforcement is expected to continue to develop as well.
Europe and the UK
The past year saw a continued focus on labor markets in Europe. The most common area of focus remains no-poach agreements (in various forms), but we expect non-competes to also face scrutiny in 2026—particularly given potential reforms back on the political agenda in the UK.
Both the European Commission (EC) and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) issued their first fines in labor market investigations in 2025. On June 2, 2025, the EC fined food delivery companies Delivery Hero and Glovo a total of €329 million (approximately US$383 million) for participating in a cartel in the online food delivery sector. According to the EC, the companies leveraged Delivery Hero’s minority stake in Glovo and: i) agreed not to poach each other’s employees; ii) exchanged commercially sensitive information; and iii) allocated geographic markets. The EC fined Delivery Hero €223 million (approximately US$257.8 million) and Glovo €105.5 million (approximately US$122.1 million). This decision was groundbreaking, as it marked the EC’s first finding of a cartel in the labor market and the first instance of the EC finding that cartel conduct was facilitated by a minority stake in a rival company.
On March 21, 2025, the CMA issued its first-ever fine in a labor case totaling £4.2 million (approximately US$5.5 million), having reached a settlement with five companies for exchanging commercially sensitive information and colluding on separate occasions on the rates of pay of freelance workers involved in the production and broadcasting of sports content in the UK. In particular, the broadcasters were found to have exchanged information and benchmarked day rates offered to freelance suppliers, including with a view to “avoid getting into a bidding war.” As part of the settlement, the companies accepted the findings of liability. British Sky Broadcasting, as the whistleblower, received complete immunity from fines.
At an EU Member State level, vigorous enforcement continued: the French Competition Authority (FCA) sanctioned two no-poach agreements between four separate companies active in the engineering, technology consulting, and IT services sectors;[1] Slovakia’s Antimonopoly Office (AMO) sanctioned a trade association for introducing a code of ethics that forbade its members from poaching employees of other members; the Polish and Portuguese competition authorities issued formal charge sheets to companies over no-poach agreements in the logistics sector and beverages sector, respectively; and Spain’s competition authority Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC) announced that it was investigating several providers of ground services for general aviation for alleged anticompetitive agreements, including no-poach agreements.
The Opinion of Advocate General Emiliou in Tondela is of particular interest for labor cases in Europe. While the opinion is not binding, and it remains to be seen whether the Court of Justice for the European Union will follow it, Advocate General Emiliou concluded that no-poach agreements between all Portuguese Division 1 and 2 football clubs during the COVID-19 pandemic will not be an infringement “by object” provided that such agreements are justified by the financial challenges faced by clubs as a result of the pandemic. If this position is adopted by the court, it would turn on its head both the principle that no-poach agreements are anticompetitive per se and the principle that that industry-wide financial distress is not sufficient to justify any form of cartel conduct. The court’s decision, and its potential applicability beyond sporting cases, will therefore be closely monitored by authorities and businesses alike.
European competition authorities hit their stride on competition issues in labor markets in 2025, with almost all major authorities progressing cases. While the EC signaled in the past that it believed national agencies are better-positioned to investigate no-poach agreements, the Delivery Hero/Glovo decision may herald a new appetite by the EC for labor cases. We expect national (and potentially EC) enforcement to continue apace in 2026 and expect more clarity on the potential reforms to the treatment of non-competes in the UK.
For more information on antitrust enforcement in labor markets, please contact any member of the firm’s Antitrust and Compliance practice.
[1] The FCA imposed fines totaling €29.5 million (approximately US$34.1 million), with one company receiving immunity from fines due to having alerted the FCA. The FCA also closed an investigation into non-solicitation clauses in partnership contracts between several of the companies, finding that these clauses did not have an anticompetitive purpose, and that there was insufficient evidence of anticompetitive effects.