This bill amends the National Labor Relations Act to prohibit employers from terminating or altering an employee’s coverage under a group health plan while the employer is effecting a lockout or while the employee is engaged in a lawful strike. It adds two new unfair-labor-practice prohibitions to section 8(a) and incorporates the ERISA definition of a “group health plan.”
The bill also creates a new civil-penalty regime in section 12: tiered dollar penalties for violations tied to whether the conduct occurs during a lockout or a strike, an enhanced penalty for repeat offenses that coincide with discharge or cause serious economic harm, and a pathway for personal liability for directors or officers in appropriate cases. The changes shift enforcement toward monetary sanctions administered by the National Labor Relations Board and inject new compliance risk into collective-bargaining disputes and benefits administration.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill adds two specific prohibitions to NLRA section 8(a) making it an unfair labor practice for an employer to terminate or alter an employee’s group health coverage during an employer lockout or during a lawful strike. It defines “group health plan” by reference to ERISA and layers in civil penalties and potential director/officer liability enforceable by the NLRB.
Who It Affects
Private-sector employers that sponsor group health plans, labor unions and striking employees, benefits administrators and insurers who manage or underwrite employer-sponsored plans, and the NLRB, which will enforce the new penalties. Employers that commonly use labor leverage in bargaining or that run replacement-worker operations face the most direct change.
Why It Matters
The bill removes a common source of employer leverage in labor disputes—threats to health coverage—and replaces traditional remedies with explicit monetary penalties. That combination alters bargaining incentives, raises ERISA and benefits-administration questions, and creates new enforcement and compliance tasks for employers and the NLRB.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill works by inserting two new prohibitions into the list of unfair labor practices in section 8(a) of the National Labor Relations Act. One new paragraph bars employers from terminating or altering group health coverage while the employer is conducting a lockout that is intended to influence collective bargaining before a strike.
The other bars the same conduct while an employee is participating in a lawful strike. By placing these prohibitions squarely within section 8(a), the bill makes coverage-termination or coverage-alteration claims a matter for NLRB unfair-labor-practice proceedings.
To make clear what plans are covered, the bill adds a statutory definition of “group health plan” that points to the ERISA statutory definition (section 607(1) of ERISA). That linkage means most employer-sponsored medical, dental, and vision plans administered as group health plans under federal benefits law are within the bill’s scope.
The text, however, does not itself prescribe how coverage must be continued (for example, whether the employer must pay the employer share of premiums or whether COBRA rules apply), which leaves several practical implementation questions for adjudication and regulation.Enforcement is handled by amendments to section 12 of the NLRA, which the bill restructures into subsections. The bill creates dollar-capped civil penalties tied to the nature of the violation: higher caps for violations tied to employer lockouts and lower caps for violations tied to strikes, with doubling of the cap where the unfair labor practice coincides with a discharge or causes serious economic harm and the employer has a prior similar violation within five years.
The penalties are explicitly stated to be in addition to any other remedy the Board orders, and the Board must consider gravity, employer size, prior history, and the public interest when setting penalty amounts.The bill also authorizes, on a facts-and-circumstances basis, assessment of penalties against individual directors or officers who directed, committed, knew about, or had authority to prevent a violation but failed to do so. That provision raises corporate-governance implications because it exposes senior individuals to personal monetary sanctions tied to labor-relations decisions.
Overall, the bill converts what often is remedied by cease-and-desist orders or make-whole relief into an explicit civil-penalty regime and broadens the NLRB’s remedial toolkit in labor disputes involving healthcare coverage.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill adds two new unfair labor practice prohibitions in NLRA section 8(a): one forbidding termination or alteration of group health coverage during employer lockouts used to influence bargaining, and another forbidding the same during lawful strikes.
It defines “group health plan” by reference to ERISA section 607(1), thereby covering employer-sponsored group medical and similar plans recognized under ERISA.
For violations tied to lockouts the Board may assess civil penalties up to $75,000 per violation; for violations tied to lawful strikes the cap is $50,000 per violation.
The bill requires the Board to double the applicable penalty (to $150,000 or $100,000) when the unfair labor practice coincides with an employee’s discharge or causes serious economic harm and the employer committed a similar violation within the prior five years.
The Board may assess penalties against directors or officers where the official directed, committed, or had actual or constructive knowledge and the authority to prevent the violation but failed to do so, and the Board must consider gravity, employer size, prior history, and public interest in setting penalties.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Short title
Designates the act as the "Striking and Locked Out Workers Healthcare Protection Act." This purely nominative provision has no substantive effect but frames the statute's purpose for interpretive context.
Prohibits altering/terminating group health coverage during employer lockouts
Amends NLRA section 8(a) by adding a paragraph that makes it an unfair labor practice for an employer to terminate or alter an employee’s group health coverage when the employer is taking action to lock out, suspend, or withhold employment to influence the employee or their representative prior to a strike. Practically, that converts common tactics of withholding benefits during lockouts into a statutory prohibition enforceable by the NLRB.
Prohibits altering/terminating group health coverage during lawful strikes
Adds a separate paragraph to section 8(a) forbidding termination or alteration of group health coverage while an employee is engaged in a lawful strike. Because the prohibition applies only to lawful strikes, determinations about strike lawfulness will be central to enforcement and likely contested in Board proceedings.
Adopts ERISA's group health plan definition
Adds a new clause to NLRA section 2 that defines 'group health plan' by reference to ERISA section 607(1). That choice ties the NLRA prohibition to the established federal benefits definition, capturing the same universe of employer-sponsored plans ordinarily governed by ERISA while relying on ERISA's existing statutory terms rather than drafting a new definition.
Creates civil-penalty framework and individual liability
Restructures section 12 of the NLRA into subsections and creates three new penalty regimes: civil penalties up to $75,000 for violations tied to lockouts and up to $50,000 for violations tied to strikes, with a mandatory doubling of the cap where the violation coincides with discharge or serious economic harm and the employer has a prior similar violation within five years. The subsection also authorizes, on a case-by-case basis, penalties against directors or officers who directed or had knowledge of and authority to prevent the violation. The Board must consider gravity, employer size, prior history, and public interest when fixing penalty amounts, and penalties are stated to be in addition to other Board-ordered remedies.
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Explore Employment in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Employees who are lawfully striking or are locked out — they gain statutory protection against loss or alteration of employer-sponsored group health coverage during the dispute, reducing the immediate health-insurance risk associated with withholding labor.
- Unions and collective-bargaining representatives — the prohibition limits a traditional source of employer leverage (cutting benefits during disputes), strengthening unions’ negotiating position and reducing the immediate economic pressure on members.
- Dependents and family members of affected employees — because the bill targets group coverage broadly (via the ERISA definition), household access to employer-sponsored health benefits is less likely to be interrupted during labor actions.
- Healthcare providers and safety-net systems — by reducing abrupt loss of coverage during disputes, providers may see fewer newly uninsured patients requiring uncompensated care tied to labor actions, though this is an indirect effect.
Who Bears the Cost
- Employers that sponsor group health plans — they face new legal risk, potential civil penalties, and likely increased administrative and financial burdens to maintain coverage or defend Board proceedings during labor disputes.
- Directors and officers of employers — the bill exposes senior individuals to personal monetary liability if the NLRB finds they directed or had constructive knowledge of violations and failed to prevent them.
- Plan administrators and insurers — they will manage coverage continuation questions and may face operational complexity (and potential premium or administrative cost shifts) if employers alter how they handle coverage during disputes.
- The National Labor Relations Board — the NLRB will carry enforcement and adjudicative responsibility for a new class of claims and for assessing fact-intensive monetary penalties, requiring resources and novel evidentiary analyses.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The bill pits two legitimate objectives against one another: preserving uninterrupted access to employer-sponsored health coverage for workers engaged in collective action, and preserving employers’ economic autonomy and bargaining leverage during labor disputes; resolving that tension requires trade-offs between worker protections and employers’ contractual and operational freedom, with additional complexity from overlapping ERISA obligations and the NLRB’s new monetary-enforcement role.
The bill leaves key operational questions unresolved. It prohibits termination or alteration of coverage but does not specify whether employers must continue to pay their share of premiums, whether premium contributions can be collected from striking employees, or how COBRA election requirements interact with the prohibition.
Those gaps will force the Board, and possibly courts, to define whether the statute creates an employer payment obligation, permits premium collection mechanisms, or requires alternative arrangements for maintaining benefits during disputes.
The ERISA cross-reference narrows plan coverage to the familiar universe of employer-sponsored group plans, but it also raises preemption and fiduciary questions. ERISA imposes duties on plan fiduciaries and provides an enforcement regime for plan participants — overlaying NLRA unfair-labor-practice claims onto ERISA-regulated plans will generate disputes about which forum and which remedies apply when coverage changes are challenged.
The director/officer liability standard—based on directing or having constructive knowledge and authority to prevent a violation—is fact-specific and could invite costly litigation over corporate decisionmaking and governance records. Finally, the penalty structure ties enhanced penalties to prior violations within five years and to harms like discharge or 'serious economic harm,' both inherently discretionary terms that will require the Board to develop substantial doctrine to ensure consistent application.
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