On June 28, 2018, Charlie Baker signed An Act Relative to Minimum Wage, Paid Family Medical Leave and the Sales Tax Holiday, part of a “grand bargain” between social justice advocates who pushed for paid family leave and a higher minimum wage and retail business representatives who urged a lower…
It’s not as easy as it used to be to answer the question of who’s the boss. Many employees survive on a patchwork of part-time jobs; the gig economy is growing fast enough to double in the next few years. Indeed, a recent study released by Upwork and the Freelancers…
On January 29, the Supreme Judicial Court in Mui v. Massachusetts Port Authority held that accrued but unused sick pay is not subject to the state Wage Act, even if the employer has agreed to pay out some or all of the sick pay when an employee separates from employment.…
In this series, I look at some of the protections afforded by Title IX that have received less attention in the media and political arena than Title IX’s applications to equity in athletics and campus sexual assault. The common conception of Title IX is that it is a law aimed…
In Barbuto v. Advantage Sales and Marketing, the Supreme Judicial Court recently blazed a trail as the first state high court to extend state employment protections to medical marijuana users where those protections were not explicitly spelled out in the medical marijuana statute. The SJC unanimously gave the green light…
Yesterday the Massachusetts Senate unanimously passed Senate Bill 2093, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA). Last month the House unanimously passed a similar bill, H. 3680. The PWFA is headed to Governor Charlie Baker, who has indicated he will sign it. What is the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act? The PWFA…
In late November, a federal district court in Texas enjoined the Department of Labor from implementing and enforcing a new rule that would have made it more difficult for employers to claim that workers do not qualify for overtime pay. But the Texas court may not have had the power…
On August 1, 2016, Massachusetts passed an historic revision to its Equal Pay Act. The new law, called An Act to Establish Pay Equity (“the Act”), strengthened the existing legislation in a number of key ways, as we discussed in detail in a previous blog posting. Specifically, the law: broadens…
More than one in six American employees provides care or assistance for an elderly or disabled family member or friend. Caregiving responsibilities cut across socioeconomic and demographic groups, although women and low-income individuals still assume a disproportionate share of such responsibilities. One in seven Americans is currently age 65 or…
Among lawyers who represent employees in discrimination lawsuits, the most maligned rule of civil procedure is Rule 56, which governs summary judgment—a time-consuming, expensive, and frequently unfairly applied procedure in which judges decide cases on paper instead of allowing juries to hear the parties’ evidence. In Massachusetts, the Supreme Judicial…