Massachusetts v. MorashMassachusetts v. Morash
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case requires us to determine whether a company’s policy of paying its discharged employees for their unused vacation time constitutes an “employee welfare benefit plan” within the meaning of §3(1) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA or Act), 88 Stat. 833, as amended,
I
In May 1986, petitioner, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, issued two complaints in the Boston Municipal Court against respondent, Richard N. Morash, president of the Yankee Bank for Finance and Savings (Bank). The complaints charged Morash with criminal violations of the Massachusetts Payment of Wages Statute, Mass. Gen. Laws §149:148 (1987). 1
Under the Massachusetts law, an employer is required to pay a discharged employee his full wages, including holiday or vacation payments, on the date оf discharge. Similar wage payment statutes have been enacted by 47 other States,
2
the
Respondent moved to dismiss the criminal complaints on the ground that the Massachusetts statute, insofar as it applied to these complaints, had been pre-empted by ERISA. He argued that the Bank’s vacation policy constituted an “employee welfare benefit plan” under the Act, and that the State’s prosecution of him for failure to comply with the policy therefore ran afoul of § 514(a) of the Act,
The Supreme Judicial Court held that the policy constituted an employee welfare benefit plan and that the prosecution was pre-empted by ERISA.
Because the federal question decided by the Supreme Judicial Court is an important one over which the courts have disagreed,
7
we granted certiorari,
II
ERISA was passed by Congress in 1974 to safeguard employees from the abuse and mismanagement of funds that had been accumulated to finance various types of employee benefits.
Fort Halifax Packing Co.
v.
Coyne,
The precise coverage of ERISA is not clearly set forth in the Act. ERISA covers “employee benefit plans,” which it defines as plans that are either “an employee welfare benefit plan,” or “an employee pension benefit plan,” or both. ERISA §3(3),
“[A]ny plan, fund, or program which was heretofore or is hereafter established or maintained by an employer or by an employee organization, or by both, to the extent that such plan, fund, or program was established or is maintained for the purpose of providing for its participants or their beneficiaries, through the purchase of insurance or otherwise, (A) medical, surgical, or hospital care or benefits, or benefits in the event of sickness, accident, disability, death or unemployment, or vacation benefits, apprenticeship or other training programs, or day care centers, scholarship funds, or prepaid legal services, or (B) any benefit described in section 186(c) of this title (other than pensions on retirement or death, and insurance to provide such pensions).” ERISA § 3(1), as codified,29 U. S. C. § 1002(1) . 8
The words “any plan, fund, or program . . . maintained for the purpose of providing . . . vacation benefits” may surely be read to encompass any form of regular vacation payments to an employee. A multiemployer fund created to provide vacation benefits for union members who typically work for several employers during the course of a year, see,
e. g., Franchise Tax Bd. of Cal.
v.
Construction Laborers Vacation Trust for Southern Cal.,
The interpretation of §3(1) is governed by the familiar principles that “ ‘words grouped in a list should be given re
This conclusion is supported by viewing the reference to vacation benefits not in isolation but in light of the words that accompany it and give the provision meaning. Section 3(1) subjects to ERISA regulation plans to provide medical, sickness, accident, disability, and death benefits, training programs, day care centers, scholarship funds, and legal services. The distinguishing feature of most of these benefits is
The Secretary, who is specifically authorized to define ERISA’s “accounting, technical, and trade terms,” ERISA § 505,
“The Secretary also anticipates issuance of regulations that will make it clear that other programs, including certain employer practices (whether pursuant to a collective bargaining agreement or not) under which employees are paid as a part of their regular compensation directly by the employer and under which no separate fund is established will not subject the employer to any filing or disclosure duties under Title I of the Act. Examples of the employer practices that may receive this treatment are payment of overtime pay, vacation pay, shift premiums, Sunday premiums, holiday premiums, jury duty or military duty, make-up pay, and pay while absent on account of illness or excused absences.” 39 Fed. Reg. 42236 (1974) (emphasis added).
The Secretary subsequently proposed regulations excluding payment of compensation for work performed at night or during holidays and paid sick leave and vacation leave from the definition of an employee benefit. 40 Fed. Reg. 24642-24643 (1975). He explained:
“[P]aid vacations . . . are not treated as employee benefit plans because they are associated with regular wages or salary, rather than benefits triggered by contingenciеs such as hospitalization. Moreover, the abuses which created the impetus for the reforms in Title I were not in this area, and there is no indication that Congress intended to subject these practices to Title I coverage.” Ibid.
The proposed regulations promulgated by the Secretary were adopted without significant modification. They provide that numerous “payroll practices,” including the payment of vacation benefits “out оf [an] employer’s general assets” rather than from a trust fund, are not employee
A contrary interpretation, including routine vacation pay policies within ERISA, would have profound consequences. Most employers in the United States provide some type of vacation benefit to their employees.
15
ERISA coverage would put all these employers to the choice of complying with the statute’s detailed requirements for reporting and disclosure or discontinuing the practice of compensating employees for unused vacation time. In addition, the extension of ERISA to claims for vacation benefits would vastly expand the jurisdiction of the federal courts, providing a federal
Ill
Respondent argues that, even if the Department of Labor regulation exempting vacation payments from ERISA constitutes a reasonable construction of the Act, the Bank’s policy did not constitute a payroll practice under the regulation because employees were allowed at their option to accumulate vacation time and defer payment for such time until termination. See Brief for Respondent 11. We do not agree. Although neither of the Secretary’s regulations explicitly covers the precise practice at issue in this case, the reasons for treating holiday and weekend premiums and payments of compensation while an employee is on vacation as “payroll
Moreover, except for the fact that the payment has been deferred, such payments are as much a part of the employees’ regular basic compensation as overtime pay or the payment of salary while the employee is absent on vacation. If in the end the employee elects to receive additional compensation instead of a paid vacation, he or she is receiving the same kind of premium pay that is available for holiday or weekend work. The fact that the payments in this case were due at the time of the employee’s termination does not affect their character as a part of regular compensation. Unlike normal severance pay, the employees’ right to compensation for accrued vacation time is not contingent upоn the termination of their employment.
In reaching this conclusion, we emphasize that the case before us — and the Secretary’s regulations on which we rely— concern payments by a single employer out of its general assets. An entirely different situation would be presented if a separate fund had been created by a group of employers to guarantee the payment of vacation benefits to laborers who regularly shift their jobs frоm one employer to another. Employees who are beneficiaries of such a trust face far different risks and have far greater need for the reporting and disclosure requirements that the federal law imposes than those whose vacation benefits come from the same fund from which they receive their paychecks. It is sufficient for this case that the Secretary’s determination that a single employ
The judgment of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Notes
Massachusetts Gen. Laws § 149:148 (1987) provides, in pertinent part: “Every person having employees in his service shall pay weekly each such employee the wages earned by him . . . ; and any employee discharged from such employment shall be paid in full on the day of his discharge .... The word ‘wages’ shall include any holiday or vacation payments due an employee under an oral or written agreement.”
See
See
See,
e. g.,
Section 514 of ERISA, as codified, provides, in pertinent part:
“(a) Except as provided in subsection (b) of this section, the provisions of this subchapter and subchapter III of this chapter shall supersede any and all State laws insofar as they may now or hereafter relate to any employee benefit plan ....
“(b) . . .
“(4) Subsection (a) of this section shall not apply to any generally applicable criminal law of a State.”
The Secretary’s payroll practice regulation provides, in part:
“(b) Payroll practices. For purposes of Title I of the Act and this chapter, the terms ‘employee welfare benefit plan’ and ‘welfare plan’ shall not include—
“(3) Payment of compensation, out of the employer’s general assets, on account of periods of time during which the employee, although physicallyand mentally аble to perform his or her duties and not absent for medical reasons (such as pregnancy, a physical examination or psychiatric treatment) performs no duties; for example—
“(i) Payment of compensation while an employee is on vacation or absent on a holiday, including payment of premiums to induce employees to take vacations at a time favorable to the employer for business reasons.”29 CFR § 2510.3 — 1(b)(3) (1987).
Compare
Holland
v.
National Steel Corp.,
The benefits described “in section 186(c) of this title” include “pooled vacation, holiday, severance or similar benefits.” See
Respondent argues that because a pooled vacation benefit plan is “a benefit described in
See e. g., Private Welfare and Pension Plan Legislation: Hearings on H. R. 1045 et al. before the General Subcommittee on Labor of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 91st Cong., 1st and 2d Sess., 470-472 (1970) (testimony of Secretary of Labor cоncerning mismanagement of 22 pension and welfare funds); 120 Cong. Rec. 4279-4280 (1974) (remarks of Rep. Brademas); id., at 4277-4278 (remarks of Rep. Perkins); 119 Cong. Rec. 30003 (1973) (remarks of Sen. Williams).
Section 505, 88 Stat. 894, provides, in part:
“Subject to title III and section 109, the Secretary may prescribe such regulations as he finds necessary or appropriate to carry out the provisions of this title. Among other things, such regulations may define accounting, technical, and trade terms used in such provisions . . . .”
See n. 6, supra.
The Secretary’s regulation provides, in part:
“(b)(1) Payment by an employer of compensation on account of work performed by an employee, including compensation at a rate in excess of the normal rate of compensation on account of performance of duties under other than ordinary circumstances, such as —
“(i) Overtime pay,
“(ii) Shift premiums,
“(iii) Holiday premiums,
“(iv) Weekend premiums.”29 CFR § 2510.3-l(b)(l) (1987).
See United States Dept, of Labor, ERISA Opinion Letter No. 79-48A (July 30, 1979) (sick leave).
A 1988 survey reflects that paid vacations are provided to 98 percent of the 31,000,000 employees in medium and large establishments. United States Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, BLS Reports on Employee Benefits in Medium and Large Firms in 1988, pp. 1, 4 (Apr. 4,1989) (press release). Another survey of 833 companies in manufacturing and nonmanufacturing industries found that 86 percent of them provided payments for, or in lieu of, vacations. United States Chamber of Commerce, Employee Benefits 1986, p. 21 (1987).
A 1983 survey found that state agencies each year resolve morе than 19,000 vacation pay claims, involving more than $7.5 million. Note, 16 Loyola U. Chi. L. J. 387, 422 (1985).
Many States have provisions for the vesting of vacation benefits, see Note, 87 Colum. L. Rev. 1702,1714 (1987), and for the administrative resolution of vacation pay claims, Note, 16 Loyola U. Chi. L. J., at 421-422. An interpretation of ERISA to include ordinary vacation pay would imperil these mechanisms designed for the benefit of employees.
We therefore have no occasion to address the Commonwealth’s alternative argument that Mass. Gen. Laws § 149:148 (1987) is a “generally applicable criminal law of a State” within the meaning of ERISA § 514(b)(4),