Your Federal Government at Work: Bills introduced in the House and Senate in the 115th Congress

The purpose of this assignment is to help you better understand the impact Federal legislation has on the rewards programs of organizations. You will find a bill/resolution under consideration in the current Congress and analyze it for possible impact on the employer, employees and the economy in general.

What to do:

Go to Congress.Gov - a source of United States Legislative Information

In the search box at the top of the page enter a phrase relevant to compensation or benefits. Some suggestions include:

• Fair pay
• Equal pay
• Unemployment insurance
• Employee ownership
• Affordable Care Act
• Employer sponsored health care
• Living wage
• Pay discrimination
• FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act)
• Minimum wage
• FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act)
• Vacation
• Employee health care
• Prevailing wage
• ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act)
• Pensions
• Health insurance portability
• Collective bargaining
• Clawbacks
• Wage differentials
• Wage inequality
• CEO/worker pay ratio

While these should turn up legislation relevant to compensation and benefits, most will also turn up legislation which is not relevant to C&B. Make sure you select something relevant to compensation or benefits in business organizations. If there is a topic you are interested in, you can look that up as well. MAKE SURE YOU SELECT A "BILL" AND NOT A "RESOLUTION." Be sure to select a bill from the 115th congress.

Assignment to be turned in:

In two to three pages summarize the key points of the bill that you think would impact organizations' pay/benefit programs. Summarize the bill in your own words. When you click on a bill you will go to a page covering the bill on the "Summary" tab. You can use this summary as a guideline but you may not just cut and paste this into your exercise. Read the text of the bill when you do this; frequently, the impact of the bill on organizational pay systems is not clear from the summary.

Describe the impact you think the bill, if enacted, would have on the organization and on its employees.

As an example, in a previous executive pay scandal, a law was passed which limited executive base pay to no more than $1 million. (An organization could pay more, but could not deduct the excess from its taxes as a business expense.) Employers could, however, pay performance-based bonuses and give stock options, since (presumably) these payments would motivate executives to high performance and increase share prices (good for all employees, shareholders and the economy in general). Of course, it could also motivate executives to cut corners and behave unethically (and criminally) to simulate high performance and to drive up share prices. What unexpected consequences might the bill you study have?

You may want to consult the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Roll Call or other sources that discuss legislative activity. (If you do refer to one of these sources, please properly cite your source in your assignment. At the time the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was passed, for example, many of these publications estimated the impact this law would have on the amounts employers would have to pay in addition to what they already paid, and a few predicted that many smaller organizations would switch to more part time workers and fewer full time workers.