Massachusetts Employment Law Blog

Live and work as a driver in New York? Independent contractors working in New York recently received the benefits of Massachusetts law. A Massachusetts Court just ruled that people who live and work in New York, but are employed by a Massachusetts company with a Massachusetts contract, can bring an action against their employer based…

Temporary warehouse workers in Nevada won a pay case about unpaid security checks. The decision came from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In Busk v. Integrity Staffing Solutions, the court ruled that exit security scans may count as paid work time under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Workers claimed the…

Drivers challenged contractor labels and won stronger rights. The decision came from the Supreme Judicial Court in Martins v. 3PD, Inc. The court explained that drivers completed core delivery work, which falls inside the company’s normal business role. As a result, companies cannot label this work as an outside service. Later, the court confirmed that…

Companies are bought and sold on a regular basis, and a question often arises as to whether the new owner is responsible for wage and hour violations. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals , in Teed v. Thomas & Betts Power Solutions, LLC, looked at just such a situation where one company bought another company’s…

The Americans with Disability Act (ADA) protects individuals who are associated with a disabled individual from employment discrimination. However, the ADA only applies to employers with 15 or more workers. The Massachusetts employment discrimination statute is a little more inclusive, covering employers with six or more workers.  Under the ruling of the Supreme Judicial Court…

Drive a truck with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) under 10,000 pounds? Then you are eligible for overtime. Importantly, the GVWR refers to the weight a vehicle can carry, not the weight it is actually carrying. The court decided that GVWR was more important than the actual weight, because the actual weight can easily…

A discretionary clause cannot remove earned commissions from wage protection. The Massachusetts Wage Act protects money workers truly earn. For instance, Prudential Insurance created a plan that let it interpret rules. It also warned employees it might deny commissions after firing for cause. Yet, the court found this wording too weak because workers had already…

A Massachusetts man who was paid after being laid off, will receive even more money because his former employer failed to specify that the extra money was for unpaid vacation days. In Dixon v. City of Malden, Mr. Dixon was dismissed from his role as a director of a nursing home, and at the time…

Philip was the Keynote Speaker at the Human Capital Series run by the Small Business Association of New England. Philip gave a lecture on January 30, 2013 entitled “Mitigating Your Employment Risks.”

Many employers automatically deduct meal breaks from employee pay, but never actually give employees those breaks. In Massachusetts that is a crime, but while the employer might suffer criminally the question often comes up as to how much pay an employee should receive for that unpaid work time. As we’ve reported in a past blog…