Employment lawyers throughout Greater Boston anticipate they’ll rack up plenty of billable hours helping clients comply with the Obama administration’s new overtime-pay rule, which some believe will lead to a wave of suits in Massachusetts courts.
Massachusetts law calls for particularly tough punishment for employers in violation of wage-and-hour laws. Such companies are automatically slapped with triple damages, a monetary penalty equal to triple the amount of the wages denied to the employee. In other states and jurisdictions, businesses are subject to double damages, or there is no prescribed penalty for wage violations.
To avoid those penalties, businesses may need to change their employment policies and invest in new technology to help them track on-the-clock work.
“Once an employee is no longer exempt, then you have to tighten up all of the record-keeping aspects to this, you have to worry about employees who are using their smartphone to communicate with their employer…there is an administrative burden that is not to be underestimated,” McCarter & English LLP partner John McKelway said.