SEC. 2. FINDINGS AND PURPOSE. 
(a) FINDINGS.—Congress makes the following find-
ings: 
(1) The intent of the Employee Retirement In-
come Security Act of 1974 to protect the pension 
and welfare benefits of workers is frustrated by the 
practice of mislabeling or relabeling employees to im-
properly exclude them from employee benefit plans. 
Employees are wrongly denied benefits when they 
are misclassified or reclassified as temporary em-
ployees, part-time employees, leased employees, 
agency employees, staffing firm employees, and inde-
pendent contractors. If their true employment status 
were recognized, these misclassified and reclassified 
employees would be eligible to participate in em-
ployee pension and welfare benefit plans because 
such plans are offered to other employees per-
forming the same or substantially the same work 
and working for the same employer. 
(2) Mislabeled employees are often paid through 
staffing, temporary, employee leasing, or other simi-
lar firms to give the appearance that the employees 
do not work for their employer. Employment con-
tracts and reports to government agencies also are 
used to give the erroneous impression that mis-
labeled employees work for staffing, temporary, em-
ployee leasing, or other similar firms, when the facts 
of the work arrangement do not meet the common 
law standard for determining the employment rela-
tionship. Employees are also mislabeled as contrac-
tors and paid from non-payroll accounts to give the 
appearance that they are not employees of their em-
ployer. These practices violate the Employee Retire-
ment Income Security Act of 1974. 
(3) Employers are amending their employee 
benefit plans to add provisions that exclude mis-
labeled employees from participation in the plan 
even in the event that such employees are deter-
mined to be common law employees and otherwise 
eligible to participate in the plan. These plan provi-
sions violate the Employee Retirement Income Secu-
rity Act of 1974. 
(4) As a condition of employment or continued 
service, employees are often required to sign docu-
ments that purport to waive their right to partici-
pate in employee benefit plans. Such documents in-
accurately claim to limit the authority of the courts 
and applicable Federal agencies to correct the 
mislabeling and relabeling of employees and to en-
force the terms of plans providing for their partici-
pation. This practice violates the Employee Retire-
ment Income Security Act of 1974. 
(5) As a condition of continued employment or 
service, employees are often required to sign docu-
ments that purport to waive their right to bring a 
lawsuit under the Employee Retirement Income Se-
curity Act of 1974. Such documents inaccurately 
claim to limit the ability of the courts and applicable 
Federal agencies to obtain any payments or benefits 
in the event that the waiver is found not to be know-
ing and voluntary. This practice violates the Em-
ployee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. 
(b) PURPOSE.—The purpose of this Act is to clarify 
applicable provisions of the Employee Retirement Income 
Security Act of 1974 to ensure that employees are not im-
properly excluded from participation in employee benefit 
plans as a result of mislabeling or reclassifying their em-
ployment status. 
SEC. 3. ADDITIONAL STANDARDS RELATING TO MINIMUM 
PARTICIPATION REQUIREMENTS. 
(a) REQUIRED INCLUSION
OF SERVICE.—Section 
202(a)(3) of the Employee Retirement Income Security 
Act of 1974 (29 U.S.C. 1052(a)(3)) is amended by adding 
at the end the following new subparagraph: