9 Unusual Employment Laws You Probably Haven’t Heard of

Most employers know the usual compliance checklist: minimum wage, overtime, workplace safety. But did you know New Jersey still bans customers from pumping their own gas? Or that the Fair Labor Standards Act has a special overtime exemption just for employees who turn maple sap into syrup? These lesser-known laws may sound odd, but they carry just as much compliance risk as the familiar ones.

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Hiring across state lines or borders means encountering rules like these more often than most companies expect. Some are outdated and rarely enforced, while others are active and can trip you up during an audit or wage claim. Here are nine real examples from federal, state, and international law, plus what each one requires.

It’s tempting to brush off an obscure law as harmless trivia, but in the eyes of the law, there’s no such thing as a minor rule. A wage-and-hour claim under a little-known exemption can bring just as many penalties, back pay demands, and legal headaches as a violation of the most famous overtime rule. Regulators don’t play favorites, and all provisions are enforced equally, no matter how obscure.

This is the danger zone for growing companies. When you expand into a new state or country, it’s often the rules you’ve never heard of that catch you off guard. The nine laws below prove that the strangest rules deserve just as much attention as the obvious ones.

Under New York Penal Law Section 165.35, charging a fee to tell someone’s fortune, or claiming occult powers to advise on personal matters, is a class B misdemeanor. The law includes a specific carve-out for shows or exhibitions performed solely for entertainment, which is why stage psychics and carnival acts operate without issue while a paid, claims-based fortune-telling service does not.

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This quirky statute is still active, and it’s a good reminder that laws don’t always match how businesses operate.

New Jersey has prohibited customers from pumping their own gas since 1949, under the state’s Retail Gasoline Dispensing Safety Act. The law requires every station to employ trained attendants to operate the pumps. Oregon had a similar ban for over 70 years before repealing it in 2023, making New Jersey the only state in the country with a full self-service prohibition. Attempts to repeal it come up regularly in the state legislature and have consistently failed.

Section 13(b)(15) of the Fair Labor Standards Act (29 U.S.C. § 213(b)(15)) exempts employees who process maple sap into sugar or syrup from the FLSA’s overtime requirement. It’s an overtime-only exemption, not a full carve-out: employees in this role are still entitled to at least minimum wage for every hour worked. The exemption sits alongside dozens of other narrow, industry-specific carve-outs written into the FLSA over the decades, most of which get far less attention.

Section 14 of most California Industrial Welfare Commission wage orders requires that employees be provided with suitable seating when the nature of the work reasonably permits it, and that seats be placed within reasonable reach during lulls in active duties even when the job is normally performed standing. The requirement sat largely untested for years until the California Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in Kilby v. CVS Pharmacy, which clarified how to assess “reasonably permits” on a task-by-task basis. It’s since become a regular basis for claims under California’s Private Attorneys General Act, particularly in retail and banking.

Section 13(a)(8) of the FLSA (29 U.S.C. § 213(a)(8)) exempts employees of a weekly, semiweekly, or daily newspaper with a circulation under 4,000 from both minimum wage and overtime requirements, provided most of that circulation stays within the county of publication or contiguous counties. The threshold was last raised in 1949, back when a 4,000-circulation paper was a meaningfully small, local operation. It has never been adjusted since, which means the exemption applies today exactly as it was defined more than 75 years ago.

Section 13(a)(3) of the FLSA (29 U.S.C. § 213(a)(3)) exempts employees of seasonal amusement or recreational establishments, organized camps, and non-profit educational conference centers from both minimum wage and overtime, provided the business meets one of two tests: it operates no more than seven months a year, or its receipts in its slowest six months are no more than a third of its receipts in its busiest six months. It’s a narrow exemption built specifically around seasonality, and some states, including several with their own wage laws, choose not to recognize it even where federal law allows it.

Presidential Decree No. 851 requires all Philippine employers to pay rank-and-file employees a 13th month of pay, equal to one-twelfth of their total basic salary earned that year, no later than December 24. It isn’t a bonus at the employer’s discretion. It’s a statutory obligation, and the Department of Labor and Employment requires employers to file a compliance report confirming payment. The rule has been in place since 1975 and remains one of the most consistently enforced statutory benefits in the country.

Since January 1, 2017, French companies with 50 or more employees have been required, under Article L2242-17 of the Labor Code (introduced by the 2016 “El Khomri law”), to negotiate a formal policy with employees governing after-hours contact by phone, email, and messaging tools. If the employer and employees cannot reach an agreement, the employer must draft and publish its own charter covering the same ground. The law doesn’t set fixed off-hours itself. It requires the employer to define them in writing and train staff on the resulting policy.

Since 2008, Japan’s health insurance system has required employers and local governments to measure the waistlines of employees and residents between the ages of 40 and 74 during annual health checkups, a program built around identifying metabolic syndrome and commonly shortened to the “Metabo Law.” Anyone measuring above 33.5 inches (men) or 35.4 inches (women) is flagged for dietary and lifestyle guidance. No individual is fined for the result. The obligation to measure, report, and show improvement across their workforce falls on employers and insurers, and organizations that miss participation or improvement targets can end up paying more into the national health insurance system as a result.

None of these laws are just odd-ball trivia. They’re active, enforceable requirements. Each one is part of a much larger set of rules that change by state and country, shift over time, and rarely give advance warning before they become a problem.

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That’s the gap Workwell is built to close. As an Employer of Record and Managed Service Provider operating across the United States and over 150 countries, we track wage-and-hour rules, statutory benefits, and local employment codes as part of our core work. Whether you’re hiring your next employee in a state you’ve never operated in or opening your first role in a new country, we make sure the rules that apply to that hire, familiar or not, are already accounted for before you extend an offer.

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Wondering what compliance really looks like in the next state or country on your hiring list? Reach out to our team, and we’ll guide you every step of the way.

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