Mass. pricing law is behind the times

As one of only two states to mandate that stores place individual price stickers on each item, Massachusetts forces retailers to continue a practice that introduces human error into the sales transaction and forces stores to use employees inefficiently. It’s not surprising that some retailers fail item pricing tests when they are effectively barred by state law from using the latest technology to price items accurately on their shelves.

Self-scanners and bar codes have eliminated almost every pricing error in most other states in the country. As Representative Vincent Pedone of Worcester correctly observed: “It becomes overkill when we force stores to price every item in their store.’’

Massachusetts should adopt updated laws that allow retailers to deploy accurate pricing technologies and stop forcing labor intensive and error-prone individual item pricing practices on stores.

Chris Flynn
President, Massachusetts Food Association

First, adults should have the right to enter into contracts without the state looking over their shoulder and playing big mommy and daddy. No one has to enter into an employment contract, and there are many companies to which employees can go which do not require such contracts, as the article points out.

Perhaps those companies will have a recruiting advantage. No matter what, it is an arrangement to be worked out privately according to each parties’ perception of their interests.

Saying that valuable employees are not adult enough or intelligent enough to be able manage their own contracts is demeaning. Moreover, because they are valuable enough to warrant a noncompete, they de facto have bargaining leverage.

Also, noncompetes offer advantages to start-ups. Start-ups are more fragile and vulnerable to the departure of a key employee. Moreover, there is a considerable investment in building an organization around key people and paying them high salaries with the expectation that the training and time invested in them will pay off.

Some start-ups would not even be able to take the risks without some assurances of the serious commitment of key personnel, as evidenced by noncompetes. Moreover, the courts already carefully circumscribe the necessary reasonableness and limitations which must be embodied in such contracts.

Robert Carr
Chief executive, In Silico Biosciences

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