Articles Posted in wage act

Terminated employees may. In an effort to avoid their obligations under the Massachusetts Wage Act (“Wage Act”), many employers now condition the payment of commission on continued employment.  Sometimes those same employers the fire employees to avoid the commissions because the employee was not working when the commission came due.  This may no longer work.…

Au pairs areprotected. Many families in Massachusetts use au pairs to care for their children.  The United States Department of State (“DOS”) administers this “Au Pair Program,” whereby foreign nationals obtain a special type of visa and are placed with host families in the United States, so that the foreign nationals may provide in-home childcare…

Employees who settle cases. Employers work hard to make sure employees can’t hire their own lawyers. One way to do that is to make sure employee-side lawyers cannot get paid, and that typically means fighting the court award of attorney’s fees. An interesting question arose recently. Is an employee who settles a case under the Wage Act…

Employees in Colorado will have increased rights under the state’s Wage Protection Act of 2014. The law has been expanded to give the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment (CDLE) more power to pursue wage claims on behalf of the employee. The new law also includes the expansion of the state’s wage payment law to…

Serious failure to reimburse employees for the business expenses they incur in their jobs may be tantamount to unlawful deductions from wages. In Fraelick v. PerkettPR, Inc., Fraelick sought such reimbursement from her employer, after a couple years’ worth of failures. While business expenses had never counted as unpaid wages under the Wage Act, the…

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…

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled that employers cannot deny an earned vacation payout after termination. The court struck down the vacation policy of the Electronic Data Systems Corporation. The decision made it clear: When vacation is earned, it must be paid out. The ruling confirmed this in the case filed by the Massachusetts Attorney General.…

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…

Powerful business lobby groups backed new legislation to reshape worker wage claims in Massachusetts. The proposal comes under Bill H3583. It targets treble damage payouts. Those payouts currently help workers regain lost wages and secure penalties when companies break wage rules. If passed, this bill will force employees to prove willful intent before they claim…