Category: “Off-the-clock” work

Auto Deductions for Work Breaks

Lunch breaks – and other breaks – are a normal part of most employees’ work days. Under Massachusetts law, M.G.L. c. 149, s. 100, employers must provide employees with a thirty-minute meal break after working for six consecutive hours. Many…

Off-the-Clock Work

The Massachusetts Appeals Court recently issued an important overtime ruling involving off-the-clock work. What happens when an employee works overtime but the employer claims they didn’t know about it? In the case of Vitali v. Reit Management, the Appeals Court…

Home Health Care Travel Time Wage Cases

We are handling a number of home health care cases on behalf of classes of home health care workers denied wages for their travel time between client sites. We recently gained court approval for a class action settlement against a…

Wages for Work Before and After Job Shifts

We have had several cases that fit this fact pattern: An employee is required to report for work, at either an employer’s place of business or a remote job site, and do preliminary tasks before going “on the clock”. That…

Meal Breaks and Payment of Wages

In Massachusetts, and as a matter of federal law, hourly employees do not have a right to be paid for meal breaks. However, meal breaks must be bona fide. There are two main parts of that. 1) Meal breaks must…

Travel Pay Rights in Massachusetts

Hourly employees are entitled to be paid for all time worked. This begs the basic question: What is work? There are regulations that define work pretty specifically in Massachusetts. In this post, I will focus on the sometimes controversial topic…

Introductory Post from a Massachusetts Wage Lawyer

I’m a little late with this introductory post, but now that this page has garnered a bit of readership, I figured I would take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Nicholas Ortiz. I graduated from Vanderbilt University and…