The (Nearly) Forgotten Case of Labor Concerns in Brazilian Competition Policy: Recent Developments and Lost Opportunities

In the wake of new evidence of market power of firms over workers, as a widespread economic fact, it is worth revising how the unusual interplay between merger control and labor market regulation in Brazil has played out over the past years. The analysis of recent decisions by CADE, the Brazilian antitrust agency, reveals persisting inconsistencies in remedial practice since 2000s, about relevance of “employment measures” in merger review procedures, which could lead to conflicts between the CADE and public institutions responsible for enforcing labor laws. This short essay explores the consequences of such problem for the implementation of antitrust and how legal argumentation would be key to improving competition policy in Brazil.

Alberto Barbosa Jr¹

I. INTRODUCTION

The perceived success of competition policy in Brazil compared to other jurisdictions in Latin America² hides inconsistencies in the decision-making of the Brazilian antitrust agency, Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica (“CADE”) regarding an unusual topic: the interplay between the merger control regime and labor market regulation. While such policy interactions could be seen as an old miscarriage of “antitrust justice” in developing countries, influential scholars are now advocating, in a turn of the tide, for merger remedies to prevent monopsony power in U.S. labor markets.³

In the wake of new evidence of market power of firms over wor