May 11, 2022

Today, House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) and House Education and Labor Committee Chair Bobby Scott (D-VA) introduced the Wage Theft Prevention and Wage Recovery Act.

This legislation intends to combat wage theft and promote wage recovery by: (1) requiring employers to provide an initial disclosure of the terms of their employment and regular paystubs to all employees and would create a civil fine for noncompliance of $50 for the initial violation and $100 for each repeated or willful violation; (2) allowing workers to recoup the full compensation owed to them by their employer; (3) requiring employers to pay final paychecks within 14 days of separation or by the payday for the pay period, whichever is earlier; (4) creating a civil penalty and increasing the maximum penalty when employers violate minimum wage and overtime protections under the Federal Labor Standards Act (FLSA); (5) removing the current requirement that employees affirmatively “opt-in” to engage in a collective action under the FLSA; and (6) creating a civil penalty of $1,000 for an employer’s initial violation of the FLSA’s recordkeeping provision and $5,000 for each repeated or willful violation.

A section-by-section on the bill is available here. In addition, Chair DeLauro’s office released a fact sheet on the bill, available here.

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