© 2025 Seyfarth Shaw LLP Massachusetts Wage & Hour Peculiarities, 2025 ed. | 117 security systems to customers via telephone worked in a retail establishment.686 a. Voluntariness of Work Requirement Most retailers cannot require employees to work on Sunday, and an employee’s “refusal to work for any retail establishment on Sunday shall not be grounds for discrimination, dismissal, discharge, reduction in hours, or any other penalty.”687 An employee is free to revoke his or her assent to work on Sundays after the time of hire, and an employer may not take action against an employee for refusing to work on Sundays, even if the employee previously agreed to do so. b. Former Sunday Premium Pay Requirement The Blue Laws previously imposed a premium pay requirement on businesses that fell within the retail establishment exemption.688 This requirement was eliminated effective January 1, 2023. Although the premium pay requirement is no longer in effect, employees remain entitled to premium pay earned prior to its elimination due to the three-year statute of limitations for Wage Act claims.689 Therefore, it is important for employers to understand whether these former obligations applied to their business. As of the date of publication, claims arising prior to 2022 are likely time-barred. However, for the sake of completeness, we note that prior to 2019, employees were entitled to no less than one and one-half times their regular rate of pay for Sunday work. Beginning in 2019, Massachusetts began phasing out the Sunday premium pay requirement by incrementally reducing the rate each year.690 Accordingly, businesses were required to pay premium compensation according to the following schedule: As of January 1, 2019 1.4 times the regular rate As of January 1, 2020 1.3 times the regular rate As of January 1, 2021 1.2 times the regular rate As of January 1, 2022 1.1 times the regular rate 686 See Galloway v. SimpliSafe, Inc., No. 1784CV03796-BLS1, 2019 WL 7707965 (Mass. Super. Dec. 18, 2019). 687 M.G.L. ch. 136, § 6(50). 688 When the premium pay requirement was in effect, employers did not have to pay Sunday premium pay to “bona fide executive or administrative or professional persons earning more than two hundred dollars a week.” M. G. L. ch. 136, § 6 (50), as amended through St. 2018, c. 121, §§ 5-8. Massachusetts law does not define “bona fide executive or administrative or professional persons.” Because these classifications mirror the terms used in the FLSA to sanction overtime exemptions, Massachusetts employers may consult this body of federal law for guidance in determining which of their employees were exempt from premium pay. Non-retail employers that operated on Sunday have never been subject to the premium pay requirements. M.G.L. ch. 136, § 6. 689 Sutton v. Jordan’s Furniture, Inc., 493 Mass. 728, 740 (2024). 690 See St. 2018, ch. 121, §§ 5-14.
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