I feel like this is nitpicking. There is nothing codified in law, because it's not required to be. The fundamental question should be "if the executives of a c

I feel like this is nitpicking. There is nothing codified in law, because it's not required to be. The fundamental question should be "if the executives of a company acted in the best interests of employees in such a way that it negatively impacted shareholder value, would this be grounds for a civil suit?" I think so. The shareholders are ultimately the owners of the company. Now, would this ever happen? Probably not. The first thing that would happen is that the board would remove the executives. So basically, this would take both the executives and the board acting against the interests of the shareholders. Given that the board is almost always made up of the majority shareholders, it would take a really extreme case for something like this to happen. Having said that, there are plenty of examples of shareholders taking action against the board when the board acts against their best interests.