Congress moves to guarantee holiday pay premium for millions of workers
S. 3867 — Holiday Pay Act · Filed by Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) · Introduced Feb 12, 2026 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill amends the Fair Labor Standards Act to require employers to pay employees 1.5 times their regular wage when they work on federal legal public holidays (like Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Day). The bill applies to all employers engaged in interstate commerce and integrates holiday pay into existing wage-and-hour enforcement mechanisms, allowing workers to sue for unpaid holiday compensation just as they can for unpaid overtime.
Why we flagged it
The bill's sole operative mechanism is a mandatory wage floor for holiday work—a straightforward labor standard that increases compensation for a defined class of workers. It is not a tax measure, subsidy, or deregulation; it is a wage floor, functionally similar to the minimum wage and overtime rules already in the FLSA.
What the text implies
- Holiday pay will not count toward overtime thresholds, meaning an employee working 50 hours in a week that includes a holiday will owe overtime only on hours beyond 40 (excluding the holiday premium). This prevents employers from using holiday work to inflate overtime liability but may reduce total compensation in some scenarios.
- The bill does not preempt state or local laws requiring higher holiday pay, creating a patchwork of standards. Employers in high-cost-of-living states or cities with existing holiday-pay mandates face no additional burden, but national employers must track and comply with multiple regimes.
- Enforcement is routed through existing FLSA mechanisms (liquidated damages, attorney fees, collective actions), meaning workers can sue for unpaid holiday compensation. This creates significant litigation exposure for non-compliant employers and may drive settlement pressure.
- The bill applies only to employees 'engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce'—the same jurisdictional test as the FLSA minimum wage. This covers most private-sector workers but excludes some government employees and certain agricultural/domestic workers already exempt from FLSA.
- No exemption is carved out for small employers, seasonal businesses, or industries with high holiday staffing (retail, hospitality, healthcare). Compliance costs will be uniform across firm size, potentially creating disproportionate burden on small operators with thin margins.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Ordinary workers gain a concrete wage floor for holiday work—a direct income increase for millions of employees who currently receive no premium for working on federal holidays. Employers face a new labor cost, but the bill creates no exemptions for small business and applies uniformly across the economy, reducing competitive distortion.
Who stands to gain
- employees working on federal legal public holidays
- plaintiff employment attorneys (litigation and settlement fees)
Named in the bill
Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947, Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, federal legal public holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Day, etc.), employers engaged in interstate commerce
Where it stands
- Feb 12, 2026 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Feb 12, 2026 — Referred to Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
4 lobbying clients named this bill on 4 disclosure filings across 1 quarter, Jun 2026 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $2,351,048 in lobbying spend. A filing names 48 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 72% of bills with at least one filing.
Ruben Gallego, the sponsor, reported $477,461 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Bnsf Railway Company — $960,000 on 1 filing
- International Brotherhood of Teamsters — $489,143 on 1 filing
- Int'l Ass'n of Sheet Metal Air Rail & Transp Workers Transp Div — $470,905 on 1 filing
- Communications Workers of America — $431,000 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 21, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (3,518 characters) on Aug 19, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Jun 2026 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 21, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
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