Proposal to Strengthen H.R. 5761

Covered workers would receive one week of regular pay for each year of service, prorated for partial years, with a minimum of four weeks.

The required severance could not be conditioned on signing away legal rights. Employers could offer additional severance in exchange for a release, but the federal minimum would remain unconditional.

Employers would continue paying their previous share of medical, prescription, dental, and vision coverage for six full calendar months after the layoff.

Coverage would include any spouse or dependents already enrolled in the plan. If the employer’s group plan could not continue, the employer would fund comparable continuation coverage instead of shifting the entire premium to the unemployed worker.

The added protections would apply when an employer covered by H.R. 5761 eliminates five or more related jobs across its U.S. workforce during a rolling 12-month period.

This would make it harder to avoid responsibility by dividing layoffs among different departments, locations, dates, subsidiaries, or job classifications.

Employers would have to provide a plain-language explanation of why the jobs were eliminated and what is happening to the work.

Workers would be told whether the work is being eliminated, automated, relocated, outsourced, offshored, or reassigned.

“Reorganization,” “realignment,” and “simplification” are labels. They are not explanations.

For 12 months after a covered layoff, employers would disclose when they:

• Advertise or fill substantially similar positions
• Transfer the work to another location or related company
• Use contractors or staffing agencies to perform it
• Outsource or offshore the work

The actual job duties would matter more than the title. Renaming a “coordinator” position as a “specialist” would not magically make it different work.

Severance required under the proposal would not delay, reduce, or disqualify a worker from receiving unemployment benefits.

Congress would need to address this through federal law because unemployment programs are administered through a federal-state system.

The proposal would give the U.S. Department of Labor authority to receive complaints, investigate suspected violations, obtain employer records, recover unpaid severance and benefit costs, and pursue civil penalties.

Workers would also retain private enforcement rights.

Employers could not avoid coverage by disguising layoffs as performance terminations, furloughs, forced resignations, hour reductions, worker reclassifications, or transfers of substantially similar work.

Related companies that substantially controlled the employment relationship or layoff decision could also be held responsible.