FEDA NEWS & VIEWS
INDUSTRY INSIGHTS
Government Again Demonstrates How Little It Knows About Business
Moves by the DOJ and OSHA will chill competition and threaten businesses’ autonomy over their operations.
Recent moves by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to subjectively restructure antitrust determination policies, as well as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) latest actions to give labor representatives unprecedented
access and review of an employer’s operations, all indicate this administration’s baffl ing intense distrust of businesses. This behavior also reveals a surprising lack of understanding about how businesses work and their role in keeping our communities, families — and government, itself — functional and growing.
FEDA’s July 12 Advocacy Council presentation speakers, notes criminal charges were previously reserved for only serious offenses such as “price-fi xing, customer allocation, bid-rigging, or other cartel activities among competitors … but this overly aggressive criminal enforcement (by the DOJ) could both chill healthy competition and run afoul of constitutional safeguards that require advance notice of criminal law.”
Dealers, manufacturers and all our supply chain partners must be able to determine, within current laws governing competition, what our business models will be, how those models evolve and who we partner with to do business. Like other industries, we have relied on more than a hundred years of consistent antitrust policy precedents that not only provide a foundation for protecting consumers, but protect businesses and our economic system, as well. These precedents refl ect judicial and regulatory agreements between diverse economic interests over time that have ultimately served everyone well. But now, Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, who oversees the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, is outright rejecting antitrust precedents and review processes. Instead, Kanter is imposing his personal views about businesses and their role in our economy as he makes critical determinations that will impact how companies may be structured and operate for years to come. To explain his actions, Kanter has simply stated that previous standards “mean different things to different people” and said he feels justifi ed ignoring precedent and focusing on what he sees as “market realities” to evaluate business conduct. Of greatest concern is his push to criminalize cases that
were previously considered civil matters. Sean Heather, senior vice president of international regulatory affairs and antitrust at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and one of
6 FEDA News & Views
“Of greatest concern is his push to criminalize cases that were previously considered civil matters.”
Also disturbing are OSHA’s proposals to provide labor unions more access to employers’ daily operations. One that especially threatens dealers is a reintroduced OSHA rule to “clarify the right of workers and certifi ed bargaining units to specify a worker or union representative to accompany an OSHA inspector during the inspection process/facility walkaround, regardless of whether the representative is an employee of the employer (even a non- unionized employer), if in the judgment of the compliance safety and health
offi cer such person is reasonably necessary to an effective and thorough physical inspection.” This rule was originally proposed in 2013 by several major labor unions and put forth by OSHA, but the agency removed the regulation when it was sued by the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB). The NFIB stated this regulation “gave unions a pathway to intimidate small business owners … and that Congress never intended that OSHA should open the door to unionization efforts.” U.S. Chamber Vice President of Employment Policy Marc Freedman and Associated General Contractors (AGC) President and CEO Steve Sandherr will discuss this topic and other labor policy proposals impacting FEDA members at the upcoming Advocacy Council meeting. I urge all FEDA members — both dealers and manufacturers — to attend this important meeting. For more information on FEDA legislative priorities, please contact CEO Tracy Mulqueen at
tracy@feda.com.
Patricia Bible is the owner, CEO and president of KaTom Restaurant Supply and co-chair of the FEDA Advocacy Council.
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