I 
118TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 5402 
To amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and the Portal-to-Portal 
Act of 1947 to prevent wage theft and assist in the recovery of stolen 
wages, to authorize the Secretary of Labor to administer grants to 
prevent wage and hour violations, and for other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
SEPTEMBER 12, 2023 
Ms. DELAURO (for herself, Mr. GRIJALVA, Mr. TAKANO, Ms. BONAMICI, Mr. 
BOWMAN, Mr. DESAULNIER, Ms. STEVENS, Ms. JAYAPAL, Mr. DELUZIO, 
and Mr. POCAN) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the 
Committee on Education and the Workforce 
A BILL 
To amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and the 
Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947 to prevent wage theft and 
assist in the recovery of stolen wages, to authorize the 
Secretary of Labor to administer grants to prevent wage 
and hour violations, and for other purposes. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Wage Theft Prevention 
and Wage Recovery Act’’. 
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SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress finds the following: 
(1) Wage theft occurs when an employer does 
not pay an employee for work that the employee has 
performed, depriving the worker of wages and earn-
ings to which the worker is legally entitled. This 
theft occurs in many forms, including by employers 
violating minimum wage requirements, failing to pay 
overtime compensation, requiring off-the-clock work, 
failing to provide final payments, misclassifying em-
ployees as being exempt from overtime compensation 
or as independent contractors rather than as em-
ployees, and improperly withholding tips. 
(2) Wage theft poses a serious and growing 
problem across industries for working individuals of 
the United States. Wage theft is widespread and is 
estimated 
to 
cost 
workers 
more 
than 
$15,000,000,000 per year. In certain industries, 
compliance with Federal wage and hour laws is less 
than 50 percent. 
(3) Wage theft is closely associated with em-
ployment discrimination, with women, immigrants, 
and racial and ethnic minorities being disproportion-
ately affected. Women are significantly more likely 
to experience minimum wage violations than men, 
foreign-born workers are nearly 2 times as likely to 
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experience minimum wage violations as their coun-
terparts born in the United States, and African 
Americans are 3 times more likely to experience 
minimum wage violations than their White counter-
parts. 
(4) Wage theft is closely associated with unsafe 
working conditions. 
(5) Wage theft— 
(A) depresses the wages of working fami-
lies who are already struggling to make ends 
meet; 
(B) strains social services funds; 
(C) diminishes consumer spending power 
and hurts local economies; 
(D) reduces vital State and Federal tax 
revenues; 
(E) places law-abiding employers at a com-
petitive disadvantage with noncompliant em-
ployers; 
(F) burdens commerce and the free flow of 
goods; and 
(G) lowers labor standards throughout 
labor markets. 
(6) Low-wage workers are at the greatest risk 
of suffering from wage theft. A survey of 4,387 low- 
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wage workers in New York, Los Angeles, and Chi-
cago found that 68 percent of the workers surveyed 
had experienced some form of wage theft in the 
workweek immediately before the survey was con-
ducted. These workers experienced a range of wage 
and hour violations: 26 percent of such workers were 
not paid minimum wage; 76 percent of such workers 
who worked more than 40 hours in the workweek 
immediately before the survey was conducted were 
not paid at the overtime rate; and, in the year before 
the survey was conducted, 43 percent of the workers 
who attempted to address such issues by filing a 
complaint with their employer or who attempted to 
form a labor organization experienced retaliation by 
their employers, including by being fired, suspended, 
or receiving threats of reductions in their hours or 
pay. 
(7) In 2012, State and Federal authorities as 
well as private attorneys recovered at least 
$933,000,000 in wage theft enforcement actions, 
which was nearly 3 times the value of all bank rob-
beries, residential robberies, convenience store and 
gas station robberies, and street robberies in the 
United States during that year. 
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many of the provisions of such Act do not include 
sufficient penalties to discourage violations. Improve-
ments to enforcement and amendments to such Act 
are necessary to ensure that such Act provides effec-
tive protection to individuals subject to wage theft. 
(12) The lack of a Federal right for employees 
to receive full compensation at the agreed upon wage 
rate for all work performed by the employee has re-
sulted in workers being able to recover only the ap-
plicable minimum wage, or the overtime rate if ap-
plicable, when employers engage in wage theft. 
(13) The lack of a Federal requirement to pro-
vide employees with paystubs indicating how their 
pay is calculated or to allow employees to inspect 
their employers’ payroll records significantly impedes 
efforts to identify and challenge wage theft. 
(14) The lack of a Federal requirement to pay 
employees their final payments in a timely manner 
upon termination of the employment relationship be-
tween the employer and employee has led to unrea-
sonable, and sometimes indefinite, delays in com-
pensation after an employment relationship ends. 
(15) While the Fair Labor Standards Act of 
1938, and regulations promulgated by the Secretary 
of Labor, as in effect on the day before the date of 
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enactment of this Act, require employers to com-
pensate employees at the minimum wage rate and to 
provide overtime compensation when appropriate, 
the lack of civil penalties for most violations of these 
requirements has dampened their effectiveness. 
(16) While the Fair Labor Standards Act of 
1938 and regulations promulgated by the Secretary 
of Labor, as in effect on the day before the date of 
enactment of this Act, provide employees who are 
subject to wage theft with the right to unpaid min-
imum wages or unpaid overtime compensation plus 
an additional equal amount as liquidated damages, 
this low level of damages has proved insufficient to 
deter employers from stealing the wages of their em-
ployees. 
(17) While the Fair Labor Standards Act of 
1938 and regulations promulgated by the Secretary 
of Labor, as in effect on the day before the date of 
enactment of this Act, require employers to keep 
records of employees’ pay, the lack of remedies be-
yond injunctive relief for this requirement diminishes 
the effectiveness of the requirement. 
(18) While the Fair Labor Standards Act of 
1938 and regulations promulgated by the Secretary 
of Labor, as in effect on the day before the date of 
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enactment of this Act, provide for limited criminal 
penalties when employers violate the provisions of 
such Act, the Secretary of Labor rarely resorts to 
these penalties, causing them to serve as a hollow 
threat. 
(19) The statute of limitations under section 6 
of the Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947 (29 U.S.C. 255), 
as in effect on the day before the date of enactment 
of this Act, precludes employees from commencing a 
claim for wage theft more than 2 years after the 
cause of action accrued, or more than 3 years after 
the cause of action accrued if the claim is with re-
spect to a willful violation by the employer. Addition-
ally, the statute of limitations is not automatically 
suspended while the Secretary of Labor investigates 
a complaint. These strict confines of the statute of 
limitations sometimes result in employees being de-
prived of their ability to institute a private lawsuit 
against their employer in order to recover their sto-
len wages. 
(20) Section 16(b) of the Fair Labor Standards 
Act of 1938 (29 U.S.C. 216(b)), as in effect on the 
day before the date of enactment of this Act, re-
quires employees to affirmatively ‘‘opt-in’’ in order 
to be a party plaintiff in a collective action brought 
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by another aggrieved employee seeking to recover 
stolen wages in court. This provision limits the abil-
ity of employees to unite and pursue private lawsuits 
against employers. 
(21) Under the penalty structure of the Fair 
Labor Standards Act of 1938, as in effect on the 
day before the date of enactment of this Act, many 
employers who are caught violating such Act con-
tinue to violate the Act. A Department of Labor in-
vestigation found that one-third of employers who 
had previously engaged in wage theft continued to 
do so. 
(22) The Government Accountability Office and 
the Department of Labor have recognized that when 
employers are assessed civil penalties, they are more 
likely to comply with the law in the future and other 
employers in the same region—regardless of indus-
try—are also more likely to comply with the law. 
(23) States that have enacted legislation to ad-
dress wage theft by increasing the damages to which 
employees are entitled following violations of wage 
and hour laws have positively impacted the workers 
in such States. However, many States have not en-
acted such legislation and, worse still, some States 
do not have any laws protecting workers from wage 
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theft or even agencies to enforce workers’ rights to 
compensation for work. This discrepancy in State 
laws has resulted in a fragmentation of workers’ 
rights across the United States, with some workers 
having a measure of protection from wage theft and 
other workers being left extremely vulnerable to 
wage theft. 
(24) Effective enforcement of wage and hour 
laws is critical to increasing compliance. Given the 
limited resources available for enforcement, en-
hanced strategic enforcement of Federal wage and 
hour laws is crucial. 
(25) For enhanced strategic enforcement to be 
effective, government regulators must work with 
community stakeholders who have direct knowledge 
of ongoing violations of Federal wage and hour re-
quirements and who are in a position to prevent 
such violations. 
(26) Partnerships between regulators, workers, 
nonprofit organizations, and businesses can increase 
compliance by educating workers about their rights, 
collecting evidence, reporting violations, identifying 
noncompliant employers, and modeling good prac-
tices. 
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‘‘(F) The rate of pay per workweek of the 
employee during the applicable pay period and 
an explanation of the basis for such rate. 
‘‘(G) The number of overtime hours per 
workweek worked by the employee during the 
applicable pay period and the compensation re-
quired under section 7 that is provided to the 
employee for such hours. 
‘‘(H) Any additional compensation pro-
vided to the employee during the applicable pay 
period, with an explanation of each type of com-
pensation, including any allowances or reim-
bursements such as amounts related to meals, 
clothing, lodging, or any other item, and any 
cost to the employee associated with such allow-
ance or reimbursements. 
‘‘(I) Itemized deductions from the gross in-
come of the employee during the applicable pay 
period, and an explanation for each deduction. 
‘‘(J) The date that is the beginning of the 
applicable pay period and the date that is the 
end of such applicable pay period. 
‘‘(K) The name of the employer and any 
other name used by the employer to conduct 
business. 
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