Business Community Pleads for Help

The sponsor of S. 1332, “An Act Clarifying the Process for the Wages of Dismissed Employees,” Sen. Barry Finegold, views Reuter as breaking from longstanding precedent.

Finegold’s bill would add a new §204 to the Wage Act, under which an employer would get 15 business days after an employee’s written demand to cure any shortfall — with no exposure to fees or treble damages — if the amount owed was either indisputable or the product of a good-faith error.

A proposed §204(b) would also add a broader defense, which would allow a court to exercise its discretion to withhold treble damages “if the employer shows to the satisfaction of the court that the employer’s act or omission giving rise to such action was in good faith, and that the employer had reasonable grounds for believing that its act or omission was not a violation” of the Wage Act or other employment laws.

A number of states, including West Virginia, Florida, Colorado and California, have cure periods in their versions of the Wage Act, noted Boston attorney Bronwyn L. Roberts, who prevailed last year at the SJC on behalf of the employer in Nunez v. Syncsort, Inc., a case that established that retention bonuses are not wages subject to trebling under the Wage Act.

The Legislature needs to think long and hard about who should be getting paid in Wage Act cases, she said.

“If the Legislature wants employees to get paid quickly, then it should build in [a notice and opportunity to cure provision],” she said. “Otherwise, everyone — ‘everyone’ being the lawyers — is incentivized to fight, and it results in an employee who may or may not have earned wages finding out that answer many years later.”

To read the full text of this article, please visit the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly site (subscription required).