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. | 59 1. The extent to which the intern and the employer clearly understand that there is no expectation of compensation. Any promise of compensation, express or implied, suggests that the intern is an employee—and vice versa. 2. The extent to which the internship provides training that would be similar to that which would be given in an educational environment, including the clinical and other hands-on training provided by educational institutions. 3. The extent to which the internship is tied to the intern’s formal education program by integrated coursework or the receipt of academic credit. 4. The extent to which the internship accommodates the intern’s academic commitments by corresponding to the academic calendar. 5. The extent to which the internship’s duration is limited to the period in which the internship provides the intern with beneficial learning. 6. The extent to which the intern’s work complements, rather than displaces, the work of paid employees while providing significant educational benefits to the intern. 7. The extent to which the intern and the employer understand that the internship is conducted without entitlement to a paid job at the conclusion of the internship. 331 The test is flexible, and no single factor is determinative. 332 As to non-profit charitable organizations, the revised Fact Sheet notes that unpaid internships are generally permissible. 333 b. Massachusetts Exemption for Interns The Massachusetts Minimum Fair Wage Law allows an exemption for “work by persons being rehabilitated or trained under rehabilitation or training programs in charitable, educational or religious institutions . . . .” 334 Determining whether an individual is a trainee, or intern, under Massachusetts law is a two-step process. First, the program must be run by a charitable, educational, or religious institution. 335 “Charitable” institutions are those that have registered as charities with the Massachusetts 331 DOL Wage & Hour Fact Sheet #71 (updated Jan. 2018), available a t ht tps://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.pdf (last visited Sept . 24, 2021). 332 Id . 333 Id. 334 M.G.L. ch. 151, § 2. 335 Id. See also DLS Opinion Let ter MW-2002-013 (May 9, 2002). Individuals may also qualify as “ t rainees” if they part icipate for rehabilitat ion purposes. See M.G.L. ch. 151, § 2 (excluding “persons being rehabilitated or t rained” from those working in an “occupat ion”).