The United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts has held that a Massachusetts company may be liable under the Massachusetts Wage Act for failing to pay overtime to an employee, even though that employee worked in the company’s Connecticut facility.
The Plaintiff, James Gonyou, worked as a technician and, later, a technician supervisor for Tri-Wire Engineering Solutions, Inc., a Massachusetts telecommunications company that provides tech services throughout New England. On January 5, 2009, Gonyou became a technician supervisor at Tri-Wire’s Danbury, Connecticut facility. On December 14, 2009, Gonyou filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts against Tri-Wire claiming that he had worked approximately 350 hours of overtime between January and July of 2009 and that Tri-Wire had not paid him overtime pay for those hours. Gonyou claimed that Tri-Wire’s failure to pay overtime violated both the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Massachusetts Wage Act.
Tri-Wire filed a motion to dismiss Gonyou’s claim under the Massachusetts Wage Act, arguing that the Massachusetts Wage Act did not apply because Gonyou worked in Connecticut. The court, disagreed, however, noting that the language of the Massachusetts Wage Act refers to the location of the employer, not the employee:
no employer in the commonwealth shall employ any of his employees in an occupation…for a work week longer than forty hours, unless such employee receives compensation for his employment in excess of forty hours at a rate not less than one and one half times the regular rate at which he is employed.
(emphasis added.)
The court decided that this language would be interpreted most reasonably to apply to any Massachusetts corporation that employs individuals both in Massachusetts and elsewhere, and the court did not find that applying Massachusetts law in this situation would be unfair to Tri-Wire. Accordingly, the court allowed Gonyou to proceed with his Massachusetts overtime claims against Tri-Wire. Gonyou v. Tri-Wire Engineering Solutions, Inc., D. Mass., 2010.
Of course, even if the court had dismissed Gonyou’s Massachusetts overtime claims, Gonyou still could be entitled to overtime pay under the FLSA; so why bother dismissing the Massachusetts claims? Because, unlike the FLSA, employers who are found to have violated the Massachusetts Wage Act are automatically required to pay triple damages to employees who are owed overtime or other wages. The district court’s decision suggests that Massachusetts employers who make wage payment errors will be forced to pay triple damages for those errors, even if those errors were made with respect to employees who don’t work in Massachusetts.