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

82 | Massachusetts Wage & Hour Peculiarities, 2022 ed. © 2022 Seyfarth Shaw LLP retail employers may credit Sunday and holiday premium payments toward weekly overtime payments. 439 However, the incremental reduction in the premium pay rate for Sundays and some holidays means that it will no longer satisfy the overtime pay requirement fully in any workweek in which an employee works, for example, on a Sunday and works more than 40 hours. Further, under the FLSA, a premium rate for Sunday work that is less than one and one half times must be included in the employee’s regular rate and cannot be credited towards overtime due. 440 VI. EXEMPTIONS FROMOVERTIME Under both the Massachusetts Minimum Fair Wage Law and the FLSA, employees who meet certain specified requirements are exempt from overtime pay. 441 To be exempt from overtime under state and federal law, an employee must fall within both a Massachusetts and federal exemption. While Massachusetts has specifically adopted some federal exemptions, including the so-called “white collar” exemptions, and Massachusetts courts and the DLS have looked to federal law for guidance when interpreting Massachusetts exemptions, the state and federal exemptions are not identical. Therefore, employers must ensure that employees treated as exempt satisfy the requirements of both a state and federal exemption. If an employee falls under an exemption that exists only under state law or only under federal law, but not both, the employer should not simply assume that the employee must be paid overtime—an employee may fall under one particular state exemption and a different federal exemption. For example, a sales employee working for a hotel may fall within the FLSA’s commissioned inside sales exemption, which does not exist under Massachusetts law, and the state hotel exemption, which exists under Massachusetts but not federal law. 442 Determining exempt status can be a difficult task and requires a fact-specific examination of the duties of each individual employee who could potentially qualify as exempt. An employee’s “job title [or a particular job classification] alone is insufficient to establish the exempt status of an employee.” 443 The FLSA includes some exemptions to the overtime laws that are outside of this publication’s Massachusetts law focus. 444 439 M.G.L. ch. 151, § 1A. See also Swift v. Autozone, Inc. , 441 Mass. 443 (2004). If an employer pays holiday pay for a set number of hours to it s employees, those hours are not considered to be hours worked for purposes of calculat ing overt ime. See DLS Opinion Let ter MW-2002-018 (June 5, 2002). 440 29 C.F.R. § 778.203. 441 29 U.S.C. § 213; M.G.L. ch. 151, § 1A. 442 The federal inside sales exempt ion, 29 U.S.C. § 207(i), is discussed further in Sect ion VI.B.2, and the Massachuset t s hotel exempt ion, M.G.L. ch. 151, § 1A(12), is discussed in Sect ion VI.B.5. 443 29 C.F.R. § 541.2. 444 For example, the FLSA exempt s certain commissioned inside sales employees, agricultural employees, switchboard operators, and limited-circulat ion newspaper employees from it s overt ime provisions. See 29 U.S.C. § 207(i); 29 U.S.C. § 213(a)(6); 29 U.S.C. § 213(a)(8); 29 U.S.C. § 213(a)(10). Massachuset t s law does not contain comparable exempt ions.