Sponsors (80)
The bill strengthens enforcement and deterrence for workplace safety, labor rights, and parity—likely improving protections and access to benefits for workers—while imposing substantially greater fines, compliance burdens, and litigation risk on employers, vendors, and plans that could raise costs for businesses, consumers, and taxpayers.
Workers (including minors) face stronger deterrence of unsafe and illegal labor practices because higher civil penalties make noncompliance (including dangerous child‑labor and safety violations) costlier for employers.
Plan participants and beneficiaries gain stronger enforcement of genetic‑information and mental‑health/SUD parity rules because more entities (administrators, vendors, issuers) can be held liable, improving incentives for compliance and access to benefits.
Workers and unions benefit from clearer monetary penalties and officer liability for unfair labor practices, which should increase compliance with collective‑bargaining and organizing rights and deter repeat violations.
Small businesses face substantially higher financial exposure from much larger penalties and continuing‑violation calculations, increasing the risk of financial strain, layoffs, or business closures.
Plan administrators, service providers, and issuers face expanded liability and compliance costs, creating a real risk that plans will shift costs to participants through higher premiums or reduced benefits.
Corporate officers and directors (and employers generally) incur greater personal legal risk and potential large per‑violation fines, which may deter hiring, investment, or result in costly litigation.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Raises many civil penalties across labor and safety laws, adds new NLRB fines and officer liability, expands health-plan liability, and treats certain recordkeeping failures as continuing violations.
Introduced December 10, 2025 by Robert C. Scott · Last progress December 10, 2025
Raises civil fines and expands enforcement tools for federal labor and safety laws. The bill sharply increases maximum and minimum monetary penalties for child labor, wage-and-hour, OSHA, mine safety, and migrant worker statute violations; creates a new civil-penalty authority for retaliation claims; gives the National Labor Relations Board the power to impose monetary penalties (including against officers and directors) for unfair labor practices; broadens who can be held liable for certain group health plan violations; and treats recordkeeping failures as continuing violations until fixed. Most of the penalty and enforcement changes take effect January 1, 2027; recordkeeping changes take effect on enactment.