Protections and Transparency in the Workplace Act

Summary

Requires public companies to disclose detailed data on workplace discrimination and harassment claims, to engage independent third-party law firms to investigate such claims, and to adopt mandatory training, annual employee surveys, and anonymous whistleblower systems. Companies must report counts, outcomes, aggregate payments, repeat-settlement counts, prevention efforts, average resolution time, and senior officer/board attestations about policies and compliance systems.

• Public companies must disclose aggregate data on discrimination and harassment claims (counts, outcomes, payments, repeat-settlement counts, prevention efforts, and average resolution time).
• Issuers must file current reports whenever they enter or exit an agreement resolving a covered claim and note if the claimant had multiple prior claims.
• Companies must engage and pay independent, third-party law firms to conduct impartial investigations of covered claims, with the law firm chosen by agreement of involved employees.
• Covered issuers must provide mandatory third‑party training, separate manager/HR modules, new-hire and annual retraining, and retraining for those found to have committed wrongdoing.
• Employers must run an annual third-party employee survey about safety and reporting comfort, and operate an anonymous tip line with immediate internal notification to counsel, HR head, and the board.
• General counsel, CFO, CEO, and each board member must provide written attestations that the company has policies and systems to ensure awareness of and compliance with the new requirements.
• The definition of "employee" explicitly includes volunteers, unpaid workers, independent contractors, and their employees, expanding coverage beyond traditional employees.
• Complaint names can be redacted to protect privacy, and reporting is generally aggregated to avoid disclosing individual identities without consent.
• No new federal funding is provided; compliance costs fall to issuers (investigation, training, surveys, reporting).