The Strategic Organizing Center (SOC), a federation of labor unions representing close to 4 million workers, Wednesday, August 11, called on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to reject Amazon’s proposed US$8.45 billion acquisition of MGM as a newly vigilant FTC is in the process of scrutinizing the deal that was announced in May.
In a letter sent to the acting director of the FTC’s Competition Bureau, Holly Vedova, SOC Executive Director Michael Zucker claims that Amazon has already employed anti-competitive practices in the streaming video-on-demand market and the proposed deal would let it further leverage its power to the detriment of consumers, competitors, and the film industry.
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SOC (formerly Change to Win) includes the Teamsters, Communications Workers of American (CWA), United Farmworkers of America, and Service Employees International Union.
“Amazon’s proposed acquisition of MGM would further bolster Amazon’s ability to leverage power across multiple lines of business related to the SVOD market and create further harmful vertical integration in the film industry at large,” the SOC’s Zucker wrote. “Amazon’s current practices in SVOD and related markets – including leveraging e-commerce power to build SVOD market share, bundling Prime Video with delivery and offering Prime Video at below market prices, and exclusionary use of its dominance in the streaming device and cloud computing markets – already raise serious questions of anti-competitive conduct in the specific market that would be affected by the merger.”
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