The employment "bargain" was never a bargain. A company negotiates wages every day and can absorb a failed negotiation; you negotiate maybe once a decade and cannot absorb unemployment. That asymmetry is the whole story of the American workplace. This statute corrects it: a real wage floor, a strike that can’t be broken by permanent replacement, no misclassification, paid leave, and no NDA burying your assault.
The federal minimum wage sat frozen for years while rent doubled. Tipped and disabled workers were paid a legal subminimum.Check it
You could legally strike — and be permanently replaced for it. The right existed; exercising it cost you your job.Check it
Companies called you an "independent contractor" to strip your overtime, your benefits, and your right to organize. Union elections dragged on while the employer campaigned against you, and a first contract could be stalled forever.Check it
And if you were harassed or assaulted at work, a forced-arbitration clause and an NDA buried it, and let him do it again.Check it
The minimum wage is set regionally at 50% of the local median wage, updated every two years — it tracks the actual cost of living instead of freezing while Congress argues. Subminimum wages are eliminated.
Permanent striker replacement is prohibited, with mandatory reinstatement. A strike is finally a real weapon rather than a resignation letter.
The strict ABC test ends misclassification. Union elections run on a compressed timeline, and a first contract goes to interest arbitration if the employer stalls.
Paid family and medical leave, real workplace safety enforcement, protected pensions, layoff notice, equal pay with a continuing-violation rule — and no forced arbitration or secrecy for harassment and assault.
A single national number, frozen for years at a time, meaningless in expensive cities and set by whoever could block a vote.Check it
Regional minimum wage at 50% of the BLS median hourly wage for the area, recalculated every two years. It moves with the real economy — and subminimum wages for tipped and disabled workers are eliminated entirely, with a transition.
Hours were averaged across weeks, titles were invented, and workers were misclassified out of the overtime they had earned.Check it
No averaging, no exceptions, no misclassification escape. Overtime is owed when it is worked.
You had the right to strike and the employer had the right to permanently replace you for using it — which made the right worthless.Check it
Permanent striker replacement is defined and prohibited, with mandatory reinstatement procedures and remedies. Withholding your labor is once again something a company must actually reckon with.
Misclassification stripped workers of overtime, benefits, safety protection, and the right to organize — all with a label.Check it
A strict, conjunctive ABC test — all parts must be met. Calling a worker a contractor does not make them one, and ambiguity resolves in favor of the person doing the work.
Elections dragged while employers ran captive-audience campaigns, and even a winning union could be stalled out of a first contract forever.Check it
NLRA reform with a compressed election timeline, a genuine bargaining obligation, and interest arbitration for a first contract. Union membership stays voluntary — but stalling stops working.
You couldn’t know what your colleagues earned, so you couldn’t know you were being underpaid — and the clock ran out on claims before you found out.Check it
A pay transparency registry with posted ranges and a statistical disparity presumption, plus equal pay with a continuing-violation rule so the deadline doesn’t expire before the discrimination is discoverable.
Plants closed and jobs went overseas with little notice, no severance, and no consequence for the company collecting federal benefits.Check it
Advance notice of mass layoffs and plant closings; offshoring carries defined notice, severance, and federal benefit ineligibility. And pensions get real enforcement, including standing in bankruptcy.
Forced arbitration and NDAs moved the case into a private room and sealed the outcome — protecting the company and the perpetrator, and leaving the next victim blind.Check it
No forced arbitration and no secrecy for harassment and assault claims. You get a court, and the truth is not buried. Comprehensive anti-retaliation protections back it up — along with paid family and medical leave and a real workplace safety duty.
A new baby, your own serious illness, or a parent dying meant choosing between the people who needed you and the paycheck you couldn’t lose. Most workers had no paid leave at all.Check it
Every covered worker gets at least 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave a year — for a birth or adoption, your own serious health condition, or caring for a close family member. Your job is protected, and retaliation for taking it is illegal.
Enforcement was thin, penalties were pocket change, and a worker who reported a deadly hazard could be fired before the inspector arrived.Check it
Every employer must provide a workplace free of recognized hazards that could cause death or serious harm — with real inspection authority, penalties that actually bite, and protection for the worker who speaks up.
For decades courts used an invented “liberty of contract” to strike down minimum-wage laws, limits on working hours, and worker protections — the Lochner era. Even after it faded, the move never fully died: a hostile court could revive it to gut wage and safety laws as violations of some unwritten economic freedom, and a challenger could freeze a law for years just by filing the claim.Check it
The Constitution itself forecloses it: no clause may be read to create a liberty of contract or economic due process, and economic and social laws are upheld if they rationally serve a public purpose. This statute adds the teeth — the foreclosure is a complete defense decided first, no law can be frozen by an injunction on that theory, the workers a law protects can defend it themselves, and anyone who brings the foreclosed challenge and loses pays the other side’s legal bills. A protection for the worker is not a violation of the boss’s freedom.
This is the plain-language version. The binding text is CS-6, which implements Article Thirteen of the Constitution.
This is your country’s law. Help shape the next draft of it.
