EFFECTS OF EMPLOYEE RETIREMENT SECURITY ACT, 2015
Exercise One: Your Federal Government at Work: Bills introduced in the House and Senate in the 114th 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.
Go to Congress.Gov – a source of United States Legislative Information: https:// congress.gov/.
In the box headed “Search” click on “Examples:…” In the search box 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
Card check
ClawbacksWage differentials
Wage inequality
CEO/worker pay ratio
While all of these will 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 particular topic you are interested in, you can look that up as well. MAKE SURE YOU SELECT A “BILL” AND NOT A “RESOLUTION.”
Given that we are in the second year of the 114th Congress (it ends at the end of the year), make sure the bill you select is listed as being in the 114thCongress.
Assignment – To be turned in
In Four pages summarize the key points of the bill/resolution that you think would impact organization 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 organization pay systems is not clear from the summary.
Describe the impact you think the bill/resolution, 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 pay performance-based bonuses and give stock options, however, since (presumably) these payments would motivate executives to high performance and increased share prices (good for all employees, shareholders and the economy in general). Of course it also motivated executive to cut corners and behave unethically (and criminally) to simulate high performance and to drive up share prices. What unexpected consequences might the bill/resolution you study have?
You may want to go to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Roll Call, CQ Weekly and other sources to help with legislative consequences. (If you do, make sure you properly cite everything you use.) 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 the already paid, and a few predicted that many smaller organizations would switch to more part time workers and fewer full time workers, which is happening now.
Answer Preview
ERISA is amended in the following ways; that a qualified multiple employers’ plan is to be considered a pension scheme whether the employer shares the same common interest with the employee or not…
(1244 Words)