© 2025 Seyfarth Shaw LLP Massachusetts Wage & Hour Peculiarities, 2025 ed. | 65 3. Duties Tests for White Collar Exemptions In addition to meeting the compensation requirements and salary basis test, an employee must meet one of the following duties tests to qualify for a white-collar exemption from overtime. The tests set forth certain specific duties that the employee must perform to qualify as a bona fide executive, administrative, or professional employee.367 The Massachusetts Minimum Fair Wage regulations (discussed in Section II) explicitly adopt the federal definitions of bona fide executive, administrative, and professional employees, including the duties tests for each of the white collar exemptions.368 The DOL’s 2024 Final Rule made no changes to the duties tests.369 a. Executive Employee Exemption To qualify for the executive employee exemption, an employee must exercise a large degree of authority over other employees. Specifically, the employee must meet the following requirements: 1. Effective January 1, 2020, the employee must be compensated on a salary basis at a rate not less than $684.00 per week. The 2024 DOL Final Rule proposed to increase this threshold to $844 per week as of July 1, 2024 and to $1,128 per week as of January 1, 2025, but that rule is enjoined as of the date of publication. 2. The employee’s primary duty370 must be managing the enterprise or managing a customarily recognized department or subdivision of the enterprise. 3. The employee must customarily and regularly direct the work of at least two or more other full-time employees or their equivalent (e.g., four half-time employees). 4. The employee must have the authority to hire or fire other employees, or the employee’s suggestions and recommendations as to the hiring, firing, 367 Certain highly compensated employees who perform some, but not all, of the duties set forth in the executive, administrative, or professional duties tests will also qualify as exempt from the overtime requirements. The exemption for highly compensated employees is discussed in Section V.A.4. 368 See 454 C.M.R. § 27.03; 29 C.F.R. § 541 for the adopted definitions. See also DLS Opinion Letter MW-2008-004 (July 14, 2008) (providing that federal salary, salary basis, and duties tests are incorporated by reference into Massachusetts state regulations governing overtime). 369 Defining and Delimiting the Exemptions for Executive, Administrative, Professional, Outside Sales, and Computer Employees, 89 Fed. Reg. at 32,853. 370 “Primary duty” is defined as “the principal, main, major or most important duty that the employee performs. Determination of an employee’s primary duty must be based on all the facts in a particular case, with the major emphasis on the character of the employee’s job as a whole.” 29 C.F.R. § 541.700(a). While the regulations state that the amount of time an employee spends on a particular duty is but one factor to be considered in determining the employee’s primary duty, one court of appeals has given this factor deciding weight in addressing the executive exemption. See Morgan v. Family Dollar Stores, Inc., 551 F.3d 1233, 1269 (11th Cir. 2008) (store managers non-exempt because “the overwhelming evidence at trial showed Plaintiff store managers spent 80 to 90 percent of their time performing non-exempt, manual labor”); see also Marzuq v. Cadete Enters., 807 F.3d 431, 439 (1st Cir. 2015) (fact that 90 percent of time spent was on non-exempt activity combined with other factors raises a question of material fact as to whether store managers were exempt).
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