Massachusetts Employment Law Blog

Massachusetts employees working for a Massachusetts company receive the benefit of the Massachusetts Wage Act even if they work at the company’s facility in Connecticut. The Federal District Court focused on language in the Wage Act that refers to any “employer” in the Commonwealth, not to any “employee” in the Commonwealth. Given that the employee…

President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act today, and part of the legislation protects mothers. The legislation amended federal law to require that nursing mothers be provided with “reasonable break time” to express breast milk “each time” its needed, for up to one year after birth. Employers must also provide working mothers…

In a landmark class action verdict against Novartis, a New York jury awarded $250 million in punitive damages for sexual discrimination on behalf of 5,600 women who worked for Novartis from 2002 to 2007, along with $3.3 million in compensatory damages for the 12 women who brought the complaint. The case is the largest gender…

Underwriters tasked with approving loans in accordance with detailed guidelines provided by their employer are not exempt – that is, they are entitled to overtime. Many employers misclassify their Underwriters and deny them overtime. These employers have long justified the misclassification on the “administrative exemption.” This week, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals finally laid…

In the goal to protect goodwill, confidential information and trade secrets, the typical non-competition agreements that companies use damage the targeted employee in measures far beyond the benefits – the business equivalent of a scarlet letter. But in an environment where non-competition agreements remain enforceable, those businesses seeking to compete on a level playing field…

Workers who are misclassified by their employers as independent contractors can finally recover they full value of the wages and benefits they should have received as an employee, but did not. It has long been the case that an independent contractor who should have received overtime, if she was properly classified as an employee, is…

In what seems like an obvious decision, the Supreme Judicial Court struck down EDS’s policy to deny employees a payout of earned vacation upon termination. The decision, Electronic Data Systems Corporation v. Attorney General, confirmed that when an employee earns vacation and is fired, the employer must pay out that employee for all vacation earned…

With all the talk of possible casinos on Indian reservation land in Massachusetts, not much has been said about whether those tribes would have to follow labor and employment laws. A decision this week from the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Washington State may shed light on at least one of those…

Employers can not coerce employees to work for free, deferring wages until the occurrence of some event. Oftentimes employers short of cash turn to their number one expense item, employee wages. In an effort to reduce their expenses some employers take their needs to an extreme, asking employees to work for free, accruing wages on…

Lobbyists for big business have had legislation filed to turn back the clock on Massachusetts employees. The bill, “An Act regarding treble damages” (H3583), marks an effort to shift the burdens onto employees in cases where employers have failed to pay proper wages. If passed, this bill would change the Wage Act to require every…