Jonathan F. Harris (Temple University Beasley School of Law) and Ben Kaufman (Protect Borrowers) have posted Consumer Law Meets the New Company Store (UCLA Law Review, Vol. 73, forthcoming 2026) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Firms have discovered new ways to extract value from workers beyond traditional labor exploitation. In labor markets increasingly characterized by monopsony power, platform work, and financialization, employers push a variety of financial products onto workers and establish surveillance systems that monetize worker data. This Article introduces the Triple Extraction Model to explain how firms profit from workers through the three interconnected channels of labor productivity, financial products, and data commodification. In turn, firms are turning the workplace into a modern company store.
Building on prior work establishing workers as “worker-consumers,” this Article proposes that workers facing the Triple Extraction Model turn to consumer law to complement traditional employment and labor law protections. While treating workers as consumers faces typological and theoretical tensions, the worker-consumer framework offers legal tools that practitioners have already begun utilizing to rein in exploitation. For instance, the Dodd-Frank Act’s prohibition of “abusive” practices, the Fair Credit Reporting Act’s (FCRA) requirements for treatment of personal data, and federal and state unfair and deceptive acts and practices (UDAP) laws offer mechanisms to challenge workplace financial practices. In addition, even during a time of federal inaction, a little-known provision of the Dodd-Frank Act allows states to enforce the entire body of federal consumer financial protection law.
Consumer law works best for workers when it supports collective action. The application of consumer law to the workplace can reduce surveillance that chills organizing and establish minimum standards that free up union bargaining capital for wages and other benefits.
As firms become more creative in monetizing their captive workforces, sustainable change requires both sophisticated legal strategies and shifts in workplace power dynamics. This Article provides the theoretical understanding and doctrinal tools necessary to challenge the new company store, demonstrating how consumer law can complement employment and labor laws and ultimately encourage self-enforcement through unions.
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