An Update from ABA CEO Allison Hill

Hello all,
​
We want to remind you that the COVID coffee break scheduled for today, Thursday, April 16, at 3:00 p.m. ET, will be a webinar for booksellers: “Government Relief and Wage Requirements: What You Need to Know.” Join the Zoom calls here; the meeting ID is 749 778 583. 
Tom Jardim and Scott Salmon, experts in employment and labor law from the law firm Jardim, Meisner & Susser, P.C., will walk booksellers through the federal government relief and wage requirements recently passed in response to COVID-19. 
Jardim and Salmon will cover the relief for small businesses in the CARES Act such as the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, the Paycheck Protection Program, increased unemployment benefits, and tax/tax credit information. Additionally, the webinar will cover wage and hour requirements in part implemented by the Families First Coronavirus Response Act.
To allow for sufficient time to field questions, the webinar will run approximately from 3:00 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. ET. Join the webinar here; the meeting ID is 749 778 583. For those unable to attend, a recording of the webinar will be posted on BookWeb in the upcoming days.
If you're planning to attend either day, please take note, whenever groups of competitors come together to discuss business, we must be mindful of the risks with regard to antitrust law. If you're planning to attend, please review the Antitrust guidelines below. 
Best,
The Membership Team
American Booksellers Association
914-406-7500 | [email protected] 
Antitrust Guidelines
The booksellers in the room (virtual or otherwise) are, by definition, competitors. This means that under the law, they are prohibited from discussing certain things.
Specifically:

1. There can be no discussions of price or pricing policies. Competitors are never allowed to agree on the price at which merchandise is sold, or discounts at which merchandise is offered. All discussions of price and pricing policies are strictly off-limits.
2. There can be no discussion of boycotts. Competitors cannot agree to cease doing business with any supplier for any reason. Nor can competitors agree to urge consumers to boycott a third competitor. It’s collusion, and is strictly prohibited.
3. There can be no discussion of dividing up a market. For example, if there are two booksellers in New York City, they cannot agree that one will market only to consumers north of 57th Street while the other markets only to customers south of 57th street. This is also collusion and is prohibited.

All three of these prohibitions come to us via the Sherman Antitrust Act, which carries treble damages and jail time. All three are per se violations, which means it only has to be proved that you engaged in the activity—whether or not there was intent to harm, or actual harm caused—for you to be guilty of violating the law.