By Dr. DT Cochrane, Senior Economist at the Canadian Labour Congress as published in The Hill Times Bill C-56, better known as the “Affordable Housing and Groceries Act”, gets its third reading this week. It includes an important change for challenging the corporate power that has worsened the affordability crisis: repeal of the “efficiency exception” from the Competition Act. Currently, the efficiency exception allows a merger and/or acquisition (M&A) to proceed even after the Competition Bureau determines it is likely to “substantially” reduce competition, if it is expected to produce “gains in efficiency” that would offset the harms. One problem...
  • Avid Amoeba
    3·
    2 years ago

    Never thought of consolidation as increasing market power to set wages against labor but once you put it this way, the conclusion is quite obvious.

    E: That said, consolidation in the presence of unions should increase the power of said unions because few or even a single union could bring down a whole business sector. E.g. if ROBeLUS was a single unionized company, its union could halt telecommunications via strike action. There would be no other potentially ununionized company to “step in” and fill the gap.