Virginia Labor Guidance
Free plain-English summaries of opinion letters, administrative policies, and interpretive notices from Virginia's labor agency, with the current status and the official source on every page.
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Local Government Union Requirements and Employee Protections
This is the newest chapter of DOLI's Field Operations Manual, added in 2025 to explain how Virginia's private-sector labor-organization protections now extend to local government employers and employe…
Payment of Wage
This Field Operations Manual chapter is DOLI's most detailed, covering how it enforces Virginia's Payment of Wage Law (§ 40.1-29) and Overtime Wage Act (§ 40.1-29.2): required pay-period frequency and…
Anti-Retaliation
This Field Operations Manual chapter (labeled Chapter 11 in the text, filed as LEL-14) covers Virginia's anti-retaliation laws, Code of Virginia §§ 40.1-33.1 and 40.1-33.2, which bar firing or discrim…
Virginia Minimum Wage Act
This Field Operations Manual chapter — DOLI's oldest and most-revised FOM chapter (last revised July 2019) — explains Virginia's Minimum Wage Act, which applies only to private employers with 4+ emplo…
Child Labor
This Field Operations Manual chapter explains how Virginia DOLI applies the state's Child Labor Laws (Title 40.1, Chapter 5): who needs a youth Employment Certificate (work permit) and how to get one,…
Right-to-Work Law
This Field Operations Manual chapter explains Virginia's Right-to-Work Law (Code of Virginia §§ 40.1-58 to -69), which bars closed-shop and union-shop agreements: no one can be required to join, or pa…
Garnishment
This Field Operations Manual chapter explains Virginia's garnishment law (Code of Virginia §§ 34-29 and 34-33): how much of an employee's "disposable earnings" a creditor can reach in a pay period, th…
Use of Polygraphs in Certain Employment Situations
This Field Operations Manual chapter covers Virginia's law banning most polygraph ("lie detector") tests of law-enforcement employees, with a narrow exception: an agency's chief executive can require …
Payment for Medical Exams as a Condition of Employment
This Field Operations Manual chapter explains Virginia Code § 40.1-28, which bars employers from requiring an employee or applicant to pay for a medical examination (including drug or TB tests) or for…
Preventing Employment By Others of Former Employee
This Field Operations Manual chapter covers Virginia Code § 40.1-27, which makes it a crime for an employer or its agent to willfully and maliciously prevent, or try to prevent, a former employee — wh…
Equal Pay Irrespective of Sex
This Field Operations Manual chapter explains Virginia's Equal Pay Irrespective of Sex Act, which requires equal pay and fringe benefits for men and women doing substantially equal work, for private-i…
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These are official interpretive documents from Virginia's labor agency: opinion letters answering questions from employers and workers, administrative policies, and interpretive notices. They show how the agency applies wage-and-hour and workplace law to real situations, but they are guidance, not statutes or court decisions, and the agency can supersede or withdraw them. Every page above shows the document's current status, when that status was last verified, and a link to the official source.