My question involves labor and employment law for the state of: Massachusetts.
I have a co-worker who works from home for most of the week, based out of a satelliete office of a major Fortune 500 company. In order to do this, for years she has had a second phone line paid for the company used as a work phone, and a dial-up connection to get into the company's system. Recently, the company got rid of the dial-up connection capability for all of their remote employees, making them have to get a satellite or high-speed internet connection.
However, now the company is closing down the office she is based out of and laying off almost all of the employees, but she was one of the ones they are keeping, and she will be working from home full-time. They have said to her that now because they're closing down the office, they can no longer "justify" paying for the high-speed satellite connection from her house, and she will now have to pay for it every month out of her own pocket! That was bad enough, but now just this week, they told her that they're not even going to pay for the second phone line that she has used as a work line for years, and she needs to disconnect it, and any long-distance calls she needs to make to do her work will need to be done from her own home phone, and they won't even reimburse her for the calls. Not only that, but since she got rid of the work line, the manager and surpervisor have been calling her AT HOME on her HOME PHONE at 6:30 and 7:00 at night!!
She *is* an exempt, salaried employee, but she's not a manager or anything like that where she'd be on-call. She's also not a contractor or an "at will" employee or anything like that. She is a normal full-time employee, and now she has to PAY to work, and use her home phone to conduct work WITHOUT REIMBURSEMENT. Is this illegal?


