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. | 99 • Personnel management • Human resources • Employee benefits • Labor relations • Public relations • Government relations • Computer networks • Internet and database administration • Legal and regulatory compliance 543 While an employee may perform some sales or production work and still be considered an administrative employee, his or her “primary duty” must be office or non-manual work as described above. The term “primary duty” is defined as “the principal, main, major or most important duty that the employee performs.” 544 Determination of an employee’s primary duty is based on all the facts in a particular case with the primary emphasis on the overall character of the employee’s job. 545 In assessing whether an employee meets the requirements of the administrative exemption, courts sometimes look to what is called the “administrative-production dichotomy.” 546 In so doing, courts ask whether the employee’s main job function is to “generate . . . [the] product or service that the employer’s business offers to the public,” or whether the employee’s job function is “ancillary” to the generation of that product or service. 547 An employee whose main job function is generating the employer’s product will typically not qualify for the administrative exemption. 548 543 29 C.F.R. § 541.201(b); DOL Wage & Hour Fact Sheet #17C (July 2008). 544 29 C.F.R. § 541.700(a); DOL Wage & Hour Fact Sheet #17C (July 2008). 545 29 C.F.R. § 541.700(a); DOL Wage & Hour Fact Sheet #17C (July 2008). 546 See Reich v. John Alden Life Ins. Co ., 126 F.3d 1, 9-10 (1st Cir. 1997) (holding that insurance sales personnel were not “product ion” employees because they did not “generate” company’s main product—insurance policies). 547 Id. See also Hines v. State Room, Inc. , 665 F.3d 235, 242 (1st Cir. 2011) (sales managers at banquet facility exempt because their work was ancillary to employer’s business of providing banquet s); Cash v. Cycle Craft Co. , 508 F.3d 680, 686 (1st Cir. 2007) (new purchase/customer relat ions manager exempt because his role in improving customer service and creat ing bid proposals to meet the needs of his agent ’s customers involved “exercis[ing] independent judgement as he engaged in the company’s business operat ions”). 548 The administ rat ive-product ion dichotomy has received renewed at tent ion after the DOL’sWage and Hour Division issued an “Administ rator’s Interpretation” in which it concluded that the administ rat ive exempt ion does not apply to the“ typical” mortgage loan officer because a loan officer’s dut ies generally involve sales and servicing customers, rather than focusing on the