employment

SJC clarifies how far colleges and universities can go in reducing salaries and funding for tenured faculty members

Published on: April 1, 2024 | by Tom Miller

Tenure is a crucial foundation for academic freedom at colleges and universities. Once professors receive tenure, they have a lifetime job from which it is very difficult for them to be fired. Nonetheless, tenure alone does not insulate a faculty member from institutional pressure. After all, the school still sets pay and benefits, chooses recipients for grants and awards, sets teaching assignments and schedules, and more. Faculty members in the sciences, whose research depends on access to expensive labs and equipment, are particularly dependent on financial support from their institutions.

In a decision issued in early March in Henry Wortis v. Trustees of Tufts College, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court took on the question of what protections tenure gives professors from pay cuts and loss of access to lab space. The case was brought by eight faculty members at the Tufts University School of Medicine—including Henry Wortis, a Professor of Immunology—who were granted tenure at various points between 1970 and 2009. In 2017 and 2019, Tufts adopted new policies under which professors who failed to cover a certain percentage of their salaries with external grants could have their pay reduced. These policies resulted in very significant decreases in compensation for the plaintiffs: Wortis’s annual salary, for instance, fell from approximately $190,000 to around $97,000. Many of the plaintiffs also had their appointments reduced to less than full-time, potentially exposing them to tenure revocation procedures. Additionally, in 2016, Tufts also adopted a policy tying the availability of lab space to the coverage of indirect costs by external grant funding brought in by faculty members. Several of the plaintiffs had their lab space reduced under this policy, impeding their ability to conduct research.

After pursuing an internal grievance procedure, the faculty plaintiffs sued the university in 2019 for breach of contract and other claims, based on both the reduction of the compensation and the loss of lab space. A Superior Court judge granted summary judgment to Tufts on all counts, and the plaintiffs appealed. In an opinion by Justice Scott Kafker, the SJC affirmed the judgement with respect to the lab space issue, but reversed on the issue of compensation, sending the case back to the trial court.

Know Your Rights: Restrictions on Non-Solicitation Clauses

Published on: November 7, 2022 | by Ana Muñoz

We have previously written about how Massachusetts law limits non-competition clauses. Non-competition clauses restrict where an employee can work after she leaves a job; an employee agrees in a contract not to work for a competitor for a period of time after she separates from an employer. Under M.G.L. c. 149 § 24L, non-compete agreements signed as a condition of employment must meet certain requirements, including advance notice of the clause, compensation in exchange for accepting the limitation, and the opportunity to consult with counsel. The law also requires that non-competes have a limited duration and scope. Clauses signed after October 2018 must comply with the statute to be enforceable.

But there are other kinds of restrictions that are like non-competes that are not subject to the statute’s requirements. Principal among those are non-solicitation agreements. Non-solicitation clauses restrict who an employee can contact after they leave a job. Non-solicitation clauses can prohibit people from recruiting employees at the prior employer. Clauses can prohibit reaching out to, or doing business with, any customers of the prior employer. Sometimes they are written so broadly that a clause tries to prohibit an employee from even speaking with a former customer or co-worker. Thus, employers sometimes try to use non-solicitation agreements to accomplish what they no longer can through a non-compete clause: The clauses are broad and unlimited; they can be so restrictive about what communications an employee may have, that, in practice, the employee cannot conduct business. Imagine, for example, a seasoned salesperson with a large existent network of customers. As a practical matter, a non-solicitation agreement might bar her from talking to most potential customers in her industry should she leave a job, preventing her from performing any new job she should get that involves sales.

Courts, however, have held overly broad non-solicitation agreements unenforceable. Thus, even absent the protection of a statute, the law still places restrictions on a company to limit a former employee’s communications with former colleagues and customers. A judge in the Massachusetts Superior Court recently noted that non-solicitation agreements “limit competition in a market to sell goods or services to potential customers.” As the Appeals Court has held, a non-solicitation agreement can only be enforced under Massachusetts law to the extent “necessary to protect the employer’s legitimate business interests” and “and only to the extent that it is reasonable in time and space, necessary to protect legitimate interests, and not an obstruction of the public interest.” That means, for example, that a non-solicitation clause that does not have any relationship to protecting an employer’s confidential information, intellectual property, or trade secrets is likely unenforceable. A non-solicitation agreement that is not limited in time or geography is also likely unenforceable.

When Are Remote Workers Covered by Massachusetts Laws?

Published on: October 31, 2022 | by David Russcol

In the last few decades, and particularly since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, remote working arrangements have become increasingly common. In many industries, an employee can produce documents, answer emails, and attend video meetings from anywhere with an Internet connection, without even setting foot in an employer’s office. That flexibility, however, can create complications for the employment relationship, particularly when there is a question about which state’s laws apply. Since Massachusetts laws are often more favorable to employees than those of other states, we regularly field questions from workers wondering whether they can enforce their rights under Massachusetts law even if they do not live, or regularly work, in Massachusetts.

Unfortunately, there is not one clear answer that applies to all laws or all situations. For the most part, a court will look at the details of an employment relationship to decide whether Massachusetts is the core of the relationship or has significant connections to what the employee was doing. The physical place that work takes place is relevant but not always dispositive. CONTINUE READING ›

“I Quit!” What You Need to Know About the Law Before You Resign

Published on: October 11, 2022 | by Emma Quinn-Judge

If you are an at-will employee, you have the right to quit your job at any time. And there may be compelling reasons to leave immediately. But quitting your job will affect your legal rights, so before you resign, here are some things to consider.

Can I collect unemployment?

You may not be able to collect unemployment if you quit. In Massachusetts, if you choose to resign, you will not be eligible for unemployment unless you show that you left (a) for good cause attributable to your employer; or (b) for urgent and compelling personal reasons. When you quit, the burden will be on you to show that you should receive unemployment. CONTINUE READING ›

David Russcol Defeats Summary Judgment Motion in Federal Unpaid Wage and Sexual Harassment Case

Published on: July 21, 2022 | by Zalkind Duncan & Bernstein LLP

Earlier this week, a federal judge largely denied the defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment in a case alleging that a nonprofit operating group homes on Cape Cod coerced our client into working long hours for no cash wages for nearly two years, and allowed her to be sexually harassed by her supervisor. David Russcol convinced the court that issues such as whether our client is exempt from the state minimum wage law and whether she was subjected to unlawful retaliation rest on factual determinations that must be made by a jury.