Antitrust lawsuits settled since 2000 have amounted to $96 billion, according to a report from Good Jobs First, an American non-profit organization.
The food industry was not one of the more regular or expensive offenders, the report said, but they have paid $2 billion to settle lawsuits.
But it also said “the most significant wage-fixing cases have occurred in the poultry processing industry, where companies including Pilgrim’s Pride have paid over $40 million in antitrust settlements.”
Along with alleged conspiracies to raise the prices of goods and services, about three dozen cases involving schemes to depress wages or salaries were also uncovered.
Despite the billions of dollars corporations have paid in fines and settlements, price-fixing scandals continue to emerge on a regular basis, and numerous large corporations have been named in repeated cases, the report said.
Stiffer penalties could help reduce repeated offences, it said, but putting a real dent in price-fixing will probably require aggressive steps to deal with excessive market concentration, which makes it more likely to occur.
Antitrust lawsuits against the world’s largest pork, poultry and beef producers are ongoing in federal courts with many companies striking new settlements each month.
So where is concentration an issue in the Canadian food industry? I would pick supermarket chains, beef and pork packing, egg grading and processing, bread baking, fertilizer production and railways. I'm sure you could add more.
