Anti-Poaching and Wage-Fixing Agreements: Drawing the Line Between Competitive and Criminal

Originally published in Build Houston magazine. In October 2016, the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued guidance identifying poaching agreements and wage-fixing agreements as primary antitrust enforcement targets.  In April 2018, DOJ brought the Department’s first enforcement case over illegal anti-competitive employment related agreements. In a market where skilled labor is in increasingly high demand, and the price of labor continues to rise, scrutiny of employment-related agreements is also on the…