Sponsors (81)
Official title: To safeguard the rights of workers and protect children by responsibly increasing civil monetary penalties and other means.
Introduced December 10, 2025 by Robert C. Scott · Last progress December 10, 2025
The bill strengthens enforcement of labor, safety, and parity rules—improving protections for workers, unions, and benefit claimants—but does so by raising penalties and expanding liability in ways that increase costs, litigation risk, and regulatory burden for employers (especially small businesses), with potential pass‑through effects to plan participants and taxpayers.
Workers (including minors) face safer workplaces and stronger deterrence of child‑labor and safety violations because substantially higher civil penalties make noncompliance costlier.
Workers and unions gain stronger enforcement of collective bargaining and organizing rights as employers can be fined and officers held liable for unfair labor practices, which should improve compliance with NLRA protections.
Health‑insurance plan participants and beneficiaries get clearer and broader enforceability for genetic‑information and mental‑health/SUD parity rules because more entities (administrators, vendors, issuers) can be held liable, likely improving access to MH/SUD benefits.
Employers—especially small businesses—face substantially higher fines and compliance costs, increasing financial strain, potential layoffs or reduced hiring, and pressure on plan budgets.
Broader liability and much larger maximum fines increase litigation risk and regulatory uncertainty for employers, plan sponsors, administrators, and service providers, raising legal and administrative costs.
Greater enforcement exposure for plan vendors and administrators could lead plans to shift costs to participants (higher premiums or reduced benefits), reducing affordability or access for beneficiaries.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Raises many labor- and safety-related civil penalties, creates new penalty authorities, expands liability for health plan actors, authorizes NLRB fines, and treats some recordkeeping failures as continuing violations.
Increases civil penalties and expands enforcement tools across multiple federal labor, safety, and benefits laws. The bill raises maximum and minimum fines for child-labor, wage-and-hour, OSHA and mine-safety violations; creates a new civil-penalty authority for retaliation (section 11(c)); makes certain recordkeeping failures continuing violations; broadens who can be held liable for group health plan violations; and authorizes the NLRB to impose civil penalties (including personal liability for officers/directors) for unfair labor practices. Most of the major penalty and enforcement changes take effect January 1, 2027; the recordkeeping change is effective on enactment.