© 2025 Seyfarth Shaw LLP Massachusetts Wage & Hour Peculiarities, 2025 ed. | 159 what information meets these requirements and, as such, creates ambiguity.970 Nor have the courts or the Massachusetts Attorney General provided guidance as to the meaning of the amendment. A personnel record cannot include “information of a personal nature about a person other than the employee if disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of such other person’s privacy.”971 Under the law, an employer and an employee may agree to remove information from a personnel record “for any reason.”972 If there is a disagreement as to whether information should be included in the record, “the employee may submit a written statement explaining the employee’s position,” which will become part of that employee’s personnel record and must be included when the record is transmitted to a third party.973 If an employer includes information in a personnel record that it knows or should have known to be false, the employee can seek to have the information expunged “through the collective bargaining agreement, other personnel procedures or judicial process.”974 The Personnel Records law requires all employers to provide an employee or former employee with an opportunity to review his or her personnel record during normal business hours at the employer’s place of business within five business days of the employee’s written request. The law also requires employers to provide an employee or former employee with a copy of his or her personnel record within five business days of the employee’s written request.975 Employers may limit the frequency of employee requests to review personnel records to twice per year.976 However, a review stemming from the placement of negative information into an employee’s personnel record does not count as one of the two annually permitted reviews.977 The Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General enforces the law and may seek a fine of not less than $500 and not more than $2,500 per violation.978 In addition, the SJC has held that 970 For example, it is not clear whether an employer is required to notify an employee of a casual e-mail exchange between managers criticizing an employee’s performance; whether an employer must notify an employee each time he or she makes a ministerial timekeeping error; or whether an employer is required to notify an employee of negative information documented during an internal investigation that lasts more than ten days. It also is not clear when and how the determination is made as to whether information “may be used” to negatively affect the employee. 971 M.G.L. ch. 149, § 52C. 972 Id. 973 Id. 974 Id. One court has made clear that correcting or expunging false information is the only available remedy for allegedly false information in a personnel record. Stevenson v. Amazon.com, Inc., Civ. No. 15-13505-FDS, 2017 WL 758467, *2 (D. Mass. Feb. 27, 2017). 975 M.G.L. ch. 149, § 52C. 976 Id. 977 Id. 978 M.G.L. ch. 149, § 52C.
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