Wage-theft amnesty: employers self-audit, workers lose right to sue

What it does

This bill establishes a voluntary program allowing employers to self-audit their payroll, identify wage violations, and settle with affected workers without government investigation or litigation risk. Employers who voluntarily disclose violations, calculate back wages owed, and pay workers in full receive legal protection: the Department of Labor cannot use their application against them, cannot expand the investigation beyond disclosed violations, and workers who accept settlement waive their right to sue for additional damages or liquidated penalties.

Why we flagged it

The bill's operative mechanism is a voluntary self-audit safe harbor: employers disclose violations, pay back wages, and receive immunity from investigation, discovery, and expanded enforcement. The worker recovery incentive (faster payouts) is real but secondary to the liability protection structure.

What the text implies

• Employers can strategically disclose only violations they choose to audit, leaving undisclosed wage theft outside the program's scope and protected from discovery—the 'expansion of scope' prohibition prevents DOL from investigating related practices.
• Workers who accept settlement lose liquidated damages (typically equal to unpaid wages) and attorney fees, reducing the financial incentive for private litigation and shifting enforcement burden entirely to the voluntary program.
• The program excludes prevailing-wage workers (H-1B, H-2B, H-2A, Davis-Bacon, Service Contract Act), meaning the most vulnerable visa-dependent and government-contract workers cannot participate.
• Employers denied approval face no penalty and cannot be investigated based on their application—a denied employer can reapply later or simply ignore violations, knowing the DOL cannot use the self-audit against them.
• The 5-year clean-record requirement and good-faith definition (no current investigation or lawsuit) effectively limit participation to employers not yet caught, creating a first-mover advantage for early disclosure.

Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.

Who it affects

Workers benefit from faster back-wage recovery (the pilot data shows 4x higher average payouts per case and 10x faster per-hour recovery than traditional enforcement), but they lose the right to sue for liquidated damages and attorney fees if they accept settlement, and employers gain immunity from investigation and discovery even for undisclosed violations within the audit scope. The program only reaches employers acting in good faith with no recent violations—excluding the worst actors.

Who stands to gain

• employers with unintentional wage violations seeking to avoid investigation and litigation costs
• employers in higher-wage sectors and government establishments (per pilot data, the program reached

Named in the bill

Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division, Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947, H-1B, H-2B, H-2A visa programs, Davis-Bacon Act, Service Contract Act

Where it stands

5 cosponsors: 5 Republicans.

• Mar 24, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
• Mar 24, 2025 — Referred to House Committee on Education and Workforce · Congress.gov: “Referred to the House Committee on Education and Workforce”
• Nov 20, 2025 — Markup held in committee · Congress.gov: “Committee Consideration and Mark-up Session Held”
• Nov 20, 2025 — Reported out of committee · Congress.gov: “Ordered to be Reported (Amended) by the Yeas and Nays: 20 - 15”

Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.

Money around this bill

8 lobbying clients named this bill on 14 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $8,759,963 in lobbying spend. A filing names 32 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.

More lobbying clients named this bill than 88% of bills with at least one filing.

Glenn Grothman, the sponsor, reported $325,000 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.

• National Retail Federation — $3,881,000 on 2 filings
• American Hotel & Lodging Association — $1,680,000 on 2 filings
• AFL-CIO — $1,520,000 on 2 filings
• National Association of Wholesaler-distributors — $880,000 on 2 filings
• International Foodservice Distributors Association — $532,586 on 2 filings

Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.