ABSTRACT
In their remarkable book Fair Shake: Women and the Fight to Build a Just Economy, Naomi Cahn, June Carbone, and Nancy Levit tell the stories of individual women who have seen their careers smashed and shattered at some of the most important US companies of the last fifty years. These stories – from employees at places like Walmart, General Electric, Wells Fargo, and Uber – illustrate the confluence of culture, social networks, and managerial policies that have disadvantaged and displaced female workers and elevated their male counterparts.
This essay elaborates on one facet of the work ecosystems that the authors describe: namely, their lawlessness. The modern American workplace has seen an erosion in the rule of law, not only from an external regulatory perspective but also from an internal governance perspective. American managers enjoy a relatively unbridled prerogative in designing shop-floor policies that is unique within modern democracies. These cultures do have their advantages: they make change easier, profitability more salient, and shareholders richer. But they have substantial costs as well. The lawless workplace privileges those who thrive on chaos, who have pre-existing economic or relational advantages, and who are willing to break the rules. They contribute to a disordered society and a sense of powerlessness for those who are not the ultimate winners. It is time to take on the lawless workplace and disempower those who most benefit from its predations.
Bodie, Matthew T, The Lawless Workplace (June 30, 2025), Minnesota Journal of Law and Inequality, volume 43, issue 2, pp 99-110 (2025).
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