Massachusetts Employer Duty to Post and Distribute a Veterans’ Benefits Notice

Section 2E of chapter 115, added by section 75 of the 2024 HERO Act, is an unusual kind of veterans benefit: it obliges private employers to tell their own workforce what the state offers. The Secretary of Veterans' Services, in consultation with the Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development, creates and distributes a veterans' benefits and services notice. Subsection (b) requires it to include contact and website information for the Executive Office of Veterans Services and for VA; substance abuse and mental health treatment resources; educational, workforce and training resources; tax benefits resources; information about obtaining a veteran indicator on a state driver's licence or identification card; information about eligibility for unemployment insurance under state and federal law; legal services resources; and contact information for the VA Veterans Crisis Line. Subsection (c) then puts the duty on employers. Every employer in the commonwealth with more than 50 full-time employees shall post the notice in a conspicuous location in the workplace accessible to employees, shall distribute it to each employee at the start of employment, and shall distribute it on an annual basis. Note who receives it: each employee, not each veteran employee. The notice goes to everybody. That is deliberate, and it is the most interesting thing about the section. The population this reaches is the veteran who has never identified as one to an employer, never registered with a veterans' agent, and does not know that chapter 115 exists or that a driver's licence can carry a veteran indicator. Handing the notice to the whole workforce once a year is a way of reaching them without asking anyone to declare themselves first. It also reaches family members, which is the other half of the design. Chapter 115 pays dependents in their own right, the property tax clauses reach surviving spouses and parents, and the annuity reaches Gold Star parents. An employee who is not a veteran may be the spouse or child or parent of one. What the section does not contain is a penalty. There is no fine, no private right of action and no named enforcement agency in section 2E. An employee whose employer does not post the notice has no remedy under the section itself, and this catalog will not pretend otherwise. What the section does is make the notice available and make non-compliance a plain breach of a statutory duty, which is usually enough with a large employer that has been told about it. Two practical notes. A veteran who wants the notice does not have to wait for an employer: the Executive Office of Veterans Services creates and distributes it, so ask them or a municipal veterans' agent for a copy. And the reference in the notice to a veteran indicator on a driver's licence or identification card is worth following up separately, because it is a free way to carry proof of service without carrying a DD Form 214. Section 2E sits alongside a related duty in section 2D, which requires the commissioner to make information on civilian licensure and certification opportunities available to servicemembers, members of the armed forces of the commonwealth and veterans, in a format that lets them compare military training and skills against the requirements for civilian licences, and to share that material with the Division of Occupational Licensure, the Department of Public Health, the Registry of Motor Vehicles and the other named agencies. Between them the two sections are Massachusetts putting the burden of finding veterans on the state and on employers rather than on the veteran.