Virginia labor laws, including Virginia labor laws 2024, impact the daily lives of employees and employers in Virginia. Residents of Virginia have many questions that affect them every day regarding Virginia labor laws from minimum wage rates, overtime, wage payments, vacation and sick leave, child labor, meal and rest breaks, and more.
In addition to Virginia labor laws, employer must also comply with federal labor laws such as the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), and many other federal laws. And when federal laws are different from state Virginia labor laws, usually companies must comply with the law that provides their workers the best protection.
Below we provide comprehensive information and resources regarding your more pressing Virginia labor law questions to help you answer the question and help you make the right decision about you and your employment.
Table Of ContentsVirginia’s current minimum wage is $11.00.
Under the Virginia Minimum Wage Act, there is no separate tipped rate for service workers who receive tips in VA. However, businesses whose personnel receive payment via tips must ensure that the employees receive enough tips to earn at least the standard minimum rate. If they do not earn at least the standard minimum, the employer is responsible for paying the difference.
To read more, visit our VA Minimum page, which includes topics such as minimum rates, tip minimum, tip sharing and pooling, and subminimum rates.
Virginia labor laws require employers to pay full-time employees not less than one and one-half the time of their staff’s regular rates for all hours clocked in excess of 40 hours in any one (1) workweek. This is the same requirement specified in the FLSA.
Additionally, employers do not need to offer a higher rate for coming in on holidays or weekends. They only need to pay the higher rate for overtime if the person goes over 40 hours a week.
Stronger rules about additional wages exist for certain classifications of people — for example, firefighters or law enforcement — who work more than 40 hours in a week. The rules specifically protect law enforcement and firefighters who do overtime, guaranteeing them not less than one and a half times rate. For these people, paid leave also counts towards the amount of time logged in a single week when calculating earnings. VA Statute 9.10-701.Read the Code of Virginia for additional information on these requirements.
Federal laws under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) state that employees are eligible for overtime if they work more than 40 hours per week unless otherwise exempt. Standard overtime pay is 1.5 times the regular pay. See FLSA: Overtime for more information regarding overtime requirements.
Virginia does not have a statute that governs pay rates for those employed on government projects or service agreements.
Under certain circumstances, businesses in the Commonwealth may be required to pay residents rates established by federal prevailing rates and rules. The prevailing rates may be different from the standard minimum rates.
Employees may be eligible for prevailing wages if they are hired for U.S. government or government-funded construction projects or perform certain government functions. See the Davis-Bacon and Related Acts, McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act (SCA), and Walsh-Healey Public Contracts Act (PCA) for more info.
There are different requirements for meals and breaks depending on the age of the individual.
Current state legislation requires companies to provide a lunch period of at least thirty (30) minutes to employees ages fourteen (14) and fifteen (15) when scheduled to be on the clock for more than five (5) hours continuously. VA Statute 40.1-81.
However, employers are not required to provide breaks, including meal breaks, for those sixteen (16) years old or older. Businesses may still choose to offer employees rest and/or meal breaks at their discretion — but an employer who chooses to provide a break in excess of twenty (20) minutes does not have to pay the employee for lunch periods or other breaks if they are free to leave the office, actually take their lunch or break, and do not actually perform duties while on break.
Federal law also applies. According to the FLSA, breaks twenty (20) minutes or shorter typically must be paid. Meal breaks lasting thirty (30) minutes or longer do not need to be paid under the FLSA, as long as the employee is free to do as they wish during the break. If a meal break is interrupted by a job duty or an individual is required to work or remain on call during the break, they are generally required to be paid for their mealtimes.
Current laws require employers to provide reasonable accommodations to nursing mothers after pregnancy. This includes allowing employees who are nursing mothers to take breaks during the day to express breast milk. The necessary reasonable accommodations for employees who are nursing mothers also include access to nonpublic locations for lactation and pumping. The location must be a space other than a bathroom. VA Statute 2.2-3909
You might be exempted from providing a private space for expressing breast milk if providing the space constitutes an undue hardship on your business. According to the state’s code of law, an “undue hardship” is identified on a case-by-case basis by examining the following factors:
The law specifically notes that the fact that similar arrangements are often made for other classes of employees constitutes a defense against the idea that accommodating nursing mothers is an undue hardship. This means that a supervisor cannot deny a breastfeeding mother the necessary accommodations for lactation on the basis that they are unreasonable if they consider similar accommodations to be reasonable for others dealing with separate needs.
Under the state’s labor law, employers are also expressly forbidden from taking retaliatory action against people who seek accommodations for lactation in the office. This includes requiring a mother to take leave or dismissing them from their job due to the fact that they need to express milk during the day. Discrimination against nursing women is illegal and could be grounds for prosecution in the courts.
The Code of Virginia specifies “equal pay irrespective of sex” (S 40.1-28.6). Under this law, no employer can discriminate against someone on the basis of sex by paying an employee of one gender less than someone of another for the same job, given that the role requires equal skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions. Exceptions include when salary is determined in accordance with:
For example, a job whose earnings are based on sales commissions may be exempted from this requirement because the payment is based on a system that measures earnings by the number of sales, which is a differential based on a factor other than sex.
When employers do not pay equally for equal performance, the difference in the two salaries is considered to be wage theft or unpaid time owed to the worker. The employer must make up the difference in the person’s salary in compliance with the law. People in Virginia who are paid unequally are entitled to recover up to two times the lost money in punitive damages. This would need to be done by hiring a lawyer and bringing forth litigation against the employer.
By amendment to the original law, employers covered by the FLSA are not required to adhere to state equal pay laws, though they are still required to comply with the Equal Pay Act of 1963. This law also protects against payment discrimination based on race, age, or other personal characteristics. The Equal Pay Act applies to all American businesses and guarantees equal compensation to two people of opposite sexes who do similar jobs, with similar qualifications, experience, and performance.
National law also prohibits harassment based on protected minority status, including sex, race, orientation, age, or religion. This law prevents sexual harassment against women in the workplace, including pregnant women. Under the Civil Rights Act, you might be entitled to retribution in the courts if your employer discriminates against you by allowing sexual harassment or workplace bullying to occur.
Employers in the Commonwealth are not required to provide paid or unpaid vacation benefits. However, they must provide vacation leave to their personnel if their company policy or employment agreement specifies it. Additional insight about the state’s vacation leave may now be found on our Virginia Leave Laws page.
In general, Virginia does not require employees to be given paid or unpaid sick leave unless it is specified in the employee’s contract.
If the employment contract stipulates paid or unpaid sick leave benefits, an employer must comply with the terms. There are also laws under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and other federal laws that may require employers to provide unpaid sick leave to employees.
To learn more about sick leave, please visit our Virginia Leave page.
Thanks to a recent change in state law, different regulations now apply to specific classes of home health workers.
In Virginia, home health workers are now guaranteed one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 spent at their jobs. They may use the time either for themselves or in order to take care of a family member for whom they are responsible to arrange care, such as a parent, child, sibling, or grandparent.
Home health workers are defined as those who provide in-home care to patients under Medicaid. This new law went into effect on July 1, 2021, in order to combat the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The act serves to ensure that the elderly and people with disabilities can receive the home-based care they need without putting their health at risk during the pandemic.
Private-sector employers in the Commonwealth of Virginia are not required to provide paid or unpaid holiday leave unless it is specified in an employment agreement. They do not have to pay a higher rate for coming in on a holiday, either. However, public agencies may be required to give public holidays off.More information about Virginia holiday leave may now be found on our Virginia Leave page.
Employers are not required to compensate you for time spent serving jury duty. However, they cannot require the employee to take vacation time or sick leave for jury duty, nor can they retaliate against or dismiss the person for serving jury duty.
Virginia law states that an employee on jury duty for more than four hours in one day, including travel time, is not required
To learn more about jury duty leave, please visit our Virginia Leave page.
The Commonwealth does not have a rule granting paid or unpaid leave to employees to vote in elections. However, they do need to provide, at minimum, unpaid time off to individuals who volunteer to serve as election officers and give reasonable notice. Failure to provide time off to those serving as election officers is considered a misdemeanor crime. Additional insight about the state’s voting leave may now be found on our Virginia Leave page.
Virginia labor laws require employers to provide an employee who is a victim of a crime to take leave to attend all criminal proceedings relating to a crime. To be eligible for crime victim leave, employers may require an employee to provide a copy of the form provided to the employee by the law-enforcement agency pursuant to subsection A of § 19.2-11.01 and, if applicable, a copy of the notice of each scheduled criminal proceeding that is provided to the employee as victim.
Current labor requirements do not oblige employers to provide you with severance benefits unless it is specified in your contract.
However, employers may still choose to offer severance to their employees at their discretion. If an employer chooses to provide severance benefits, it must comply with the terms of its established policy or employment agreement.
Also, certain people are ineligible for severance benefits under state law. This includes people who are fired for misconduct and those who resign without just cause.
Under certain circumstances, state residents may be eligible for benefits while they search for another job. You are required to certify that you are unemployed on a weekly basis to receive unemployment.
Workers in Virginia may receive unemployment benefits as long as they meet various criteria. For example, the worker must have earned wages during at least the first four of five quarters before the claim is filed, and they must have made at least $3,000 in two of the base period quarters.
The maximum available benefit per week is $378, and individuals must have made a minimum of $18,900.01 in two quarters in the base time to earn the largest benefit weekly. The duration of the benefits varies from 12 weeks to 26 weeks, depending on the wages earned during the base period.
Workers applying for unemployment benefits must be unemployed at no fault of their own. Those who are responsible for their unemployed are not eligible for benefits. The worker must be ready, willing, and able to work each week to collect unemployment benefits. They must also provide documentation every week that proves they are searching for work.
There are several other Virginia labor laws governing the employers and their workplaces. Below are those topics and resources:
| Disability (a mental or physical impairment) | Sex, including sexual harassment | Gender expression | National Origin |
| Race (includes hairstyle) | Sexual orientation | Religion | Ancestry |
| Creed | Gender identity | Age (40+) | Pregnancy, childbirth, and related conditions |
| Color | Genetic information | Military status | Veteran status |
| Marital status |
