Consumer Law as Work Law

Abstract

In recent decades, the U.S. labor market has shifted from a prevalence of long-term, single-employer careers to more contingent work or work disguised as entrepreneurship. These attenuated relations between worker and firm reflect the "fissuring" of work, in which firms have utilized laws that permit them to offload costs and risks though outsourcing, subcontracting, and franchising out their labor needs. Some firms now go beyond fissuring work: they treat the workers themselves as consumers by offering them services and credit products. Workers, in short, are also consumers in some contexts. And when firms expand employment contracts to extend services and credit products to workers, workers are entitled to consumer law protections.

Keywords: contract law, consumer law, employment law, labor law, personnel economics, economic perspectives, legal theory

JEL Classification: J00, J2, J3, J4,J5, J6, M5