Mass-Peculiarities: An Employers Guide to Wage & Hour Law in the Bay State 2022 Edition

© 2022 Seyfarth Shaw LLP Massachusetts Wage & Hour Peculiarities, 2022 ed. | 3 2. Exemptions Over the last century, the Commonwealth gradually has narrowed these prohibitions by enacting numerous piecemeal exemptions to the Blue Laws, and there are now fifty-five specific exemptions, listed in Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 136, Section 6, that allow certain businesses to operate legally on Sunday. The first question that an employer therefore must ask is whether it falls within one of the following exemptions. 1. “Any manner of labor, business or work not performed for material compensation” 2. The operation of a store or shop that sells food provided that “not more than a total of three persons, including the proprietor, are employed therein at any one time on Sunday and throughout the week” 3. Repairs to public roads and bridges, and the collection of tolls 4. Any public service that is necessary for the continuation of life, such as the operation of municipal water and sewage disposal systems, hospitals, and clinics 5. “[E]mergency repairs for the purposes of immediate and necessary protection of persons, or property” 6. “The manufacture, sale or distribution of steam, electricity, fuel, gas, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, acetylene, carbon dioxide and the calcining of lime, manufacturing processes which for technical reasons require continuous operation, and the processing of checks, items, documents or data by a bank or trust company” 7. The operation of radio and television stations, and the preparation, printing, publication, sale, and delivery of newspapers 8. The operation of any secular place of business operated by a person who observes the Sabbath on Saturday 9. “The showing, sale, or rental of noncommercial real property to be used for residential purposes” 10. The opening of art galleries 11. The operation of libraries 12. The operation of public bathhouses 13. The operation of boats for recreation and non-commercial fishing, and the sale of bait for fishing 14. Catching seafood not otherwise prohibited by law