‘We will all laugh at gilded butterflies’. The shadow of antitrust law on the collective negotiation of fair fees for self-employed workers

Abstract

The development of a wide-reaching collective representation for (genuine) self-employment and the collective negotiation of fair fees for independent contractors might often be more dissuasive vis-à-vis scam self-employment than the threat of reclassification. However, case law in both civil and common law jurisdictions showcases how antitrust law can hamper the collective negotiation of workers’ minimum fees. The premise of such a view, which has its roots in the early stage of development of collective bargaining, is that the agreements setting the rates of pay for non-subordinate labour stand as restraints of trade. The author contends that this narrow interpretation of the scope of collective labour law - or rather this extensive view of the scope of antitrust law - is unacceptable. On the one hand, workers who personally carry out their activity cannot be treated as businesses operating on a free market, because they are - akin to the employees - individuals who lack the power to tangibly affect the terms and conditions of their work. For those persons, as the author recalls, collective bargaining have always stood for, even before the binary legal divide between employment and self-employment was drawn. On the other hand, it appears incongruous that a major challenge to the perimeters of collective labour law stems from a formalistic approach to a field of law (antitrust or competition law) which seeks to correct the market asymmetries in the interest of weaker parties, such as smaller businesses, communities and consumers. Ultimately, the author contends that a solution to overcome this legal hurdle cannot be found through a mere change in the interpretation of the existing US and EU competition and labour law rules, which have to be amended by the legislators in accordance with the current social needs.