Ensuring Workers Get PAID Act of 2025
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Rep. Grothman, Glenn [R-WI-6]
ID: G000576
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Bill Summary
Another masterpiece of legislative theater. The Ensuring Workers Get PAID Act of 2025, a bill so dripping with sincerity it's a wonder the sponsors didn't choke on their own hypocrisy.
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The bill's primary objective is to establish a Payroll Audit Independent Determination program within the Department of Labor. This program aims to encourage employers to voluntarily self-audit and remedy unintentional violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The stated goal is to provide a more efficient and collaborative approach to resolving wage and hour disputes.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill creates a new program that allows employers to conduct self-audits, with the assistance of the Department of Labor, to identify and correct FLSA violations. Employers who participate in good faith will be shielded from certain penalties and liabilities. The program also establishes definitions for affected employees, administrators, and employers.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The primary stakeholders are employers, employees, and the Department of Labor. Employers may benefit from reduced liability and penalties, while employees may receive back wages more efficiently. The Department of Labor will oversee the program and provide resources for compliance assistance.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** Now, let's get to the real diagnosis. This bill is a classic case of "legislative placebo." It appears to address a legitimate issue but ultimately serves as a Trojan horse for corporate interests. By allowing employers to self-audit and remedy FLSA violations without penalty, the bill creates a perverse incentive for companies to exploit workers, knowing they can simply "self-correct" later.
The program's reliance on employer good faith is laughable, given the track record of corporate malfeasance in this area. The Department of Labor will be tasked with overseeing the program, but its resources and capacity to effectively monitor and enforce compliance are already strained.
In reality, this bill is a gift to corporations, allowing them to avoid accountability for wage theft and other FLSA violations. It's a cleverly crafted piece of legislation that prioritizes corporate interests over worker protections. The Ensuring Workers Get PAID Act of 2025 should be renamed the "Ensuring Corporations Get Away with Wage Theft Act."
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đź’° Campaign Finance Network
Rep. Grothman, Glenn [R-WI-6]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
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Project 2025 Policy Matches
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document. Higher similarity scores indicate stronger thematic connections.
Introduction
— 598 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise unemployment programs were defrauded of hundreds of billions of dollars, includ- ing by state-sponsored hacking groups. Not all state agencies are yet through their backlogs of appeals and fraud cases; the recovery of lost funds has been minimal; and fraud has now spilled into the traditional UI programs. The CARES Act era drastically altered the entire UI ecosystem: The federal–state partnership shifted toward federal programs and funding, and the social insurance purpose of the program was disconnected as benefits were extended, expanded to more typically uncovered populations, and made exponentially larger. l Congress should enact bipartisan commonsense UI program reforms, including statutory authority for the Labor Office of Inspector General (OIG) to access all state UI records for the purposes of investigation and requiring state agencies to crossmatch applicants with the National Directory of New Hires. l Congress should also develop a framework (through commission of a congressional report to serve as a blueprint) of technical standards on broader tech topics like usability, state agency cybersecurity postures, data taxonomy standardization, and/or identity verification standards. l Congress should provide DOL with more reasonable enforcement tools for the UI system. Currently, DOL can either send a strongly worded letter or revoke the entire Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA)16 tax credit, which would place an immediate 6 percent to 7 percent tax on all covered employers. l DOL should review all actual or planned procurements against the $2 billion (under the American Rescue Plan Act)17 for UI fraud detection, accessibility, and equity investments. These funds do not have appropriations timelines and have very minimal statutory descriptions of the intended purpose. DOL should also review and propose changes to improve state monitoring programs including developing evidence-based frameworks for evaluating the technical readiness and security postures of the state agencies; strengthen its relationship with the OIG and Government Accountability Office (GAO), and support continued development of fraud prosecution with DOJ, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the financial services community; ensure administrative and IT funding is outcome-based; and gather and publish best practices from state officials, industry partners, and other vendors who deliver UI services. — 599 — Department of Labor and Related Agencies WORKER VOICE AND COLLECTIVE BARGAINING Non-Union Worker Voice and Representation. American workers lack a meaningful voice in today’s workplace. Between 50 percent and 60 percent of workers have less influence than they want on critical workplaces issues beyond pay and benefits. Even managers are twice as likely to say their employees have too little influence rather than too much. But America’s one-size-fits-all approach undermines worker representation. Federal labor law offers no alternatives to labor unions whose politicking and adversarial approach appeals to few, whereas most workers report that they prefer a more cooperative model run jointly with management that focuses solely on workplace issues. The next Administration should make new options available to workers and push Congress to pass labor reforms that create non-union “employee involvement organizations” as well as a mechanism for worker representation on corporate boards. l Congress should reintroduce and pass the Teamwork for Employees and Managers (TEAM) Act of 2022.18 The TEAM Act: 1. Reforms the National Labor Relations Act’s (NLRA) Section 8(a)(2) prohibition on formal worker–management cooperative organizations like works councils. 2. Creates an “Employee Involvement Organization” (EIO) to facilitate voluntary cooperation on critical issues like working conditions, benefits, and productivity. 3. Amends labor law to allow EIOs at large, publicly traded corporations to elect a non-voting, supervisory member of their company’s board of directors. Alternative View. While some conservatives lament that workers lack sufficient voice in today’s workplace, others interpret the rise in independent and flexible work opportunities, significant expansion in family-friendly policies like paid family leave, and the decline in private sector unionization as indicators of workers’ increasing competency and control. Another way to help expand workers’ freedom and voices in traditional workplaces is by allowing them to choose who represents them in negotiations with their employer. The Worker’s Choice Act19 would accom- plish this by ending exclusive representation so that unions in right-to-work states are no longer forced to represent workers who do not want to join them. Union Transparency. Private-sector unions must file detailed financial infor- mation with DOL—on matters including union spending, income, loans, assets, membership information, and employee salary—but unions composed entirely
Introduction
— 76 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise to delay. With the proper limitation of labor union actions, the FLRA should have limited reason for appeals. The EEOC’s federal employee section should be transferred to the MSPB, and many of the OCS’s investigatory functions should be returned to the OPM. The MSPB could then become the main reviewer of adverse actions, greatly simplifying the burdensome appeal process. Making Civil Service Benefits Economically and Administratively Ratio- nal. In recent years, the combined wages and benefits of the executive branch civilian workforce totaled $300 billion according to official data. But even that amount does not properly account for billions in unfunded liability for retirement and other government reporting distortions. Official data also report employment as approximately 2 million, but this ignores approximately 20 million contractors who, while not eligible for government pay and benefits, do receive them indirectly through contracting (even if they are less generous). Official data also claim that national government employees are paid less than private-sector employees are paid for similar work, but several more neutral sources demonstrate that pub- lic-sector workers make more on average than their private-sector counterparts. All of this extravagance deserves close scrutiny. Market-Based Pay and Benefits. According to current law, federal workers are to be paid wages comparable to equivalent private-sector workers rather than compared to all private-sector employees. While the official studies claim that federal employees are underpaid relative to the private sector by 20 percent or more, a 2016 Heritage Foundation study found that federal employees received wages that were 22 percent higher than wages for similar private-sector workers; if the value of employee benefits was included, the total compensation premium for federal employees over their private-sector equivalents increased to between 30 percent and 40 percent.18 The American Enterprise Institute found a 14 percent pay premium and a 61 percent total compensation premium.19 Base salary is only one component of a federal employee’s total compensation. In addition to high starting wages, federal employees normally receive an annual cost-of-living adjustment (available to all employees) and generous scheduled raises known as step increases. Moreover, a large proportion of federal employ- ees are stationed in the Washington, D.C., area and other large cities and are entitled to steep locality pay enhancement to account for the high cost of living in these areas. A federal employee with five years’ experience receives 20 vacation days, 13 paid sick days, and all 10 federal holidays compared to an employee at a large private company who receives 13 days of vacation and eight paid sick days. Federal health benefits are more comparable to those provided by Fortune 500 employers with the government paying 72 percent of the weighted average premiums, but this is much higher than for most private plans. Almost half of private firms do not offer any employer contributions at all.
Introduction
— 76 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise to delay. With the proper limitation of labor union actions, the FLRA should have limited reason for appeals. The EEOC’s federal employee section should be transferred to the MSPB, and many of the OCS’s investigatory functions should be returned to the OPM. The MSPB could then become the main reviewer of adverse actions, greatly simplifying the burdensome appeal process. Making Civil Service Benefits Economically and Administratively Ratio- nal. In recent years, the combined wages and benefits of the executive branch civilian workforce totaled $300 billion according to official data. But even that amount does not properly account for billions in unfunded liability for retirement and other government reporting distortions. Official data also report employment as approximately 2 million, but this ignores approximately 20 million contractors who, while not eligible for government pay and benefits, do receive them indirectly through contracting (even if they are less generous). Official data also claim that national government employees are paid less than private-sector employees are paid for similar work, but several more neutral sources demonstrate that pub- lic-sector workers make more on average than their private-sector counterparts. All of this extravagance deserves close scrutiny. Market-Based Pay and Benefits. According to current law, federal workers are to be paid wages comparable to equivalent private-sector workers rather than compared to all private-sector employees. While the official studies claim that federal employees are underpaid relative to the private sector by 20 percent or more, a 2016 Heritage Foundation study found that federal employees received wages that were 22 percent higher than wages for similar private-sector workers; if the value of employee benefits was included, the total compensation premium for federal employees over their private-sector equivalents increased to between 30 percent and 40 percent.18 The American Enterprise Institute found a 14 percent pay premium and a 61 percent total compensation premium.19 Base salary is only one component of a federal employee’s total compensation. In addition to high starting wages, federal employees normally receive an annual cost-of-living adjustment (available to all employees) and generous scheduled raises known as step increases. Moreover, a large proportion of federal employ- ees are stationed in the Washington, D.C., area and other large cities and are entitled to steep locality pay enhancement to account for the high cost of living in these areas. A federal employee with five years’ experience receives 20 vacation days, 13 paid sick days, and all 10 federal holidays compared to an employee at a large private company who receives 13 days of vacation and eight paid sick days. Federal health benefits are more comparable to those provided by Fortune 500 employers with the government paying 72 percent of the weighted average premiums, but this is much higher than for most private plans. Almost half of private firms do not offer any employer contributions at all. — 77 — Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy The obvious solution to these discrepancies is to move closer to a market model for federal pay and benefits. One need is for a neutral agency to oversee pay hiring decisions, especially for high-demand occupations. The OPM is independent of agency operations, so it can assess requirements more neutrally. For many years, with its Special Pay Rates program, the OPM evaluated claims that federal rates in an area were too low to attract competent employees and allowed agencies to offer higher pay when needed rather than increased rates for all. Ideally, the OPM should establish an initial pay schedule for every occupation and region, monitor turnover rates and applicant-to-position ratios, and adjust pay and recruitment on that basis. Most of this requires legislation, but the OPM should be an advocate for a true equality of benefits between the public and private sectors. Reforming Federal Retirement Benefits. Career civil servants enjoy retire- ment benefits that are nearly unheard of in the private sector. Federal employees retire earlier (normally at age 55 after 30 years), enjoy richer pension annuities, and receive automatic cost-of-living adjustments based on the areas in which they retire. Defined-benefit federal pensions are fully indexed for inflation—a practice that is extremely rare in the private sector. A federal employee with a preretire- ment income of $25,000 under the older of the two federal retirement plans will receive at least $200,000 more over a 20-year period than will private-sector work- ers with the same preretirement salary under historic inflation levels. During the early Reagan years, the OPM reformed many specific provisions of the federal pension program to save billions administratively. Under OPM pres- sure, Reagan and Congress ultimately ended the old Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) entirely for new employees, which (counting disbursements for the unfunded liability) accounted for 51.3 percent of the federal government's total payroll. The retirement system that replaced it—the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS)—reduced the cost of federal employee retirement dis- bursements to 28.5 percent of payroll (including contributions to Social Security and the employer match to the Thrift Savings Plan). More of the pension cost was shifted to the employee, but the new system was much more equitable for the 40 percent who received few or no benefits under the old system. By 1999, more than half of the federal workforce was covered by the new system, and the government’s per capita share of the cost (as the employer) was less than half the cost of the old system: 20.2 percent of FERS payroll vs. 44.3 percent of CSRS payroll, representing one of the largest examples of government savings anywhere. Although the government pension system has become more like private pension systems, it still remains much more generous, and other means might be considered in the future to move it even closer to private plans. GSA: Landlord and Contractor Management. The General Services Administration is best known as the federal government’s landlord—designing, constructing, managing, and preserving government buildings and leasing and
Showing 3 of 5 policy matches
About These Correlations
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.