Aug 26 (Reuters) - Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan's initiative to use antitrust laws to protect workers faces a key test on Monday when the agency will argue the merger between grocery chain Kroger (KR.N), and its rival Albertsons (ACI.N), would crush unionized workers' bargaining power.
Khan and her fellow antitrust enforcers in the Biden administration have sought to use antitrust laws - deployed in recent decades mostly to protect consumers against high prices - to combat what they view as anticompetitive practices squeezing workers' paychecks.
Labor has been an area of focus for Khan, a former law professor and congressional antitrust counsel, who took the reins of the agency in June 2021.
If you look at Kroger's acquisition of Fred Meyer or Harris Teeter grocery stores, they massively consolidated market power in big swaths of North America, and the stores that Kroger was forced to spin off by regulators soon failed, and the profitable ones were gobbled up by Kroger anyway.
All companies pull this shit. Look at all the video game markers being bought by Valve, Sony, Microsoft, and Epic games. They promise this and that but after the ink dries, they do massive layoffs. Allowing one food superstore is dangerous. We will see higher prices. We will see layoffs and downsizing. We will see more bad products.