96 | Massachusetts Wage & Hour Peculiarities, 2025 ed. © 2025 Seyfarth Shaw LLP year.551 A business is “seasonal in nature” if it is only open during a discrete season and offers no programs, closes the facilities, and retains only maintenance employees in its off season.552 As with the federal exemption, once a business qualifies for one of the Massachusetts seasonal exemptions, an employee performing routine work that is incident to its operation is exempt for the entire year.553 5. Blanket Exemptions for Certain Businesses Massachusetts overtime law provides blanket exemptions for employees of certain types of businesses.554 Because the FLSA does not contain any similar blanket exemptions, Massachusetts employers in the industries listed below must find an applicable federal exemption before denying overtime wages to their employees.555 The Massachusetts blanket exemptions apply to employees working in: Hotels, motels, motor courts, or similar establishments Restaurants556 551 M.G.L. ch. 151, § 1A(9); DLS Opinion Letter MW-2005-001 (Feb. 3, 2005) (defining statute’s term “carried on” as meaning “open for business”). A business that operates multiple seasonal operations with distinct workforces may apply different seasonal exemptions to those workforces. DLS Opinion Letter MW-2007-003 (Sept. 24, 2007). 552 DLS Opinion Letter MW-2005-001 (Feb. 3, 2005). Seasonal businesses, except for summer camps operated by non-profit charitable organizations, must apply to the Department of Labor Standards annually for an overtime waiver. DLS Opinion Letter MW-2015-01 (Jan. 7, 2015); DLS Opinion Letter MW-2018-1-23-18 (Jan. 23, 2018). 553 Id. 554 M.G.L. ch. 151, § 1A. The blanket exemption for hospitals has been interpreted by both federal and state courts in Massachusetts. See Tortolano v. Lemuel Shattuck Hosp., 93 Mass. App. Ct. 773, 775 n.3 (2018) (noting that M.G.L. ch. 151, § 1A does not apply to hospital employees); Manning v. Boston Med. Ctr. Corp., No. 09-11724-RWZ, 2011 WL 864798, *3 (D. Mass. Mar. 10, 2011) (dismissing overtime claims by hospital employees based on hospital exemption). Hospitals are also exempted from coverage under M.G.L. ch. 149, § 148, if they are “supported in part by contributions from the commonwealth or from any city or town, . . . provide[] treatment to patients free of charge, or . . . [are] conducted as a public charity.” 555 For example, banquet servers in hotels might meet the requirements of the inside sales exemption under the FLSA. These individuals will also fall under the Massachusetts hotel exemption. These employees must still earn the Massachusetts minimum wage as discussed in Section II.A. However, if the banquet server is a tipped employee and the employer takes the tip credit and pays the employee an hourly rate of $6.75 per hour (discussed in Section VI), the amount of any overtime compensation earned by the employee would be based on the federal minimum wage. 556 In Parham v. Wendy’s Co., the court denied employer’s motion to dismiss overtime claims filed by a service technician who traveled from restaurant to restaurant performing maintenance duties inside and outside of restaurants, holding that the restaurant exemption applies only to employees who work within the restaurant, like hosts, cashiers, servers, cooks, dishwashers, and other types of jobs tied to the restaurant’s operation. Civ. No. 14-cv-14367-ADB, 2015 WL 1243535 (D. Mass. Mar. 17, 2015).
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