The labor exemptions to antitrust law: An overview

This description of the labor exemptions to antitrust law clearly does not do justice to the complexities courts face in attempting to reconcile labor and antitrust policies. Issues related to remedies, burdens of proof, and evidentiary standards that further com-plicate cases have not been addressed here. Also not discussed is the appropriate analy-sis to be applied if it is found that particular conduct falls outside both labor exemptions, i.e., whether conduct that does not merit immunity should be seen as per se illegal under antitrust law, subjected to the rule of reason, or analyzed under Apex’s “commercial competitionℍ test. This is a question to which both courts and commentators have pro-vided different answers and different rationales (for discussion of this issue, see, e.g., Areeda and Hovenkamp, 1997; Leslie, 1980).