Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Today in the Lefebvre HR and Employment Law podcast, we're discussing a recent infringement decision from the Competition and Markets Authority, whereby it issued an infringement decision and fines totalling more than £4.2 million against four of the UK's largest sports broadcasting and TV production companies for their involvement in illegal wage-fixing cartel activity. The Competition and Markets Authority found that five employers, Sky BT, ITV, BBC and IMG had been involved in an illegal wage-fixing cartel when they shared sensitive information about the fees they paid to freelance workers, such as camera operators and sound technicians, who were engaged to assist in the production and broadcasting of coverage of major sporting events. The Competition and Markets Authority found 15 instances where sensitive information about pay rates was unlawfully shared between pairs of employers. including information on daily pay rates and pay rises. In most cases, the explicit aim of sharing this sensitive wage information was to coordinate how much freelancers were paid. For example, one company expressed the desire to avoid a bidding war and another said it wanted to align and benchmark its pay rates. The Competition and Markets Authority determined that each of the 15 infringements was a by-object infringement, meaning that the conduct had, as its object, the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition within the UK. Each infringement involved the disclosure, receipt or exchange of competitively sensitive information about freelancer pay rates. Due to the degree of speciality in the affected sports production and broadcasting roles, the competition and markets authority decided to treat each affected role, for example camera operator, sound technician, etc., as its own labour market. The sharing of sensitive information about pay rates within those labour markets had unlawfully increased the degree of transparency between competitors for the freelancer's services with the objective of removing or reducing uncertainty about competitors' pay rates. This transparency and increased certainty about pay rates had a dampening impact on the degree of competition within the relevant UK-wide labour markets. As Sky had voluntarily reported its involvement in the illegal wage-fixing activity to the Competition and Markets Authority, and thereafter assisted with the subsequent investigation It was granted immunity under the Competition and Markets Authority's leniency policy and was exempted from being fined. The substantial fines levied against the other four companies involved, which amounted to over £4.2 million in total, were also discounted either because they had admitted their breaches of competition law and therefore benefited from a leniency discount, and or settled the case, therefore benefiting from a 20% settlement discount. Look out for further episodes in this series to stay up to date on all things HR and employment law related.