Washington Labor Guidance
Free plain-English summaries of opinion letters, administrative policies, and interpretive notices from Washington's labor agency, with the current status and the official source on every page.
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Job Posting Requirements
This L&I administrative policy explains the Equal Pay and Opportunities Act's job-posting disclosure duty (RCW 49.58.110): employers with 15 or more employees (including remote/out-of-state employers …
Recordkeeping and Access to Payroll Records (Non-agricultural Employment)
This L&I administrative policy explains non-agricultural employers' payroll recordkeeping duties under the Industrial Welfare Act and Minimum Wage Act: what records must be kept (names, addresses, pay…
Construction Industry Paid Sick Leave Requirements
This L&I administrative policy explains paid-sick-leave rules unique to construction industry employers (NAICS code 23, excluding residential building construction): construction workers employed less…
Agricultural Labor Standards — Meal Periods, Rest Periods, and Rates of Pay
This L&I administrative policy covers pay, meal-period, and rest-period rules specific to Washington agricultural employees, including dairy workers. It distinguishes "piece-rate active time" (paid at…
Recordkeeping and Access to Payroll Records (Agricultural Employment)
This L&I administrative policy sets recordkeeping duties for agricultural employers: names, addresses, occupations, pay rates (including separate piece-rate active/down time and rest-period rates), am…
Paid Sick Leave - Normal Hourly Compensation
This L&I administrative policy explains how employers must calculate an employee's "normal hourly compensation" for hours of paid sick leave used under the Minimum Wage Act, including which earnings (…
Salary Thresholds for Exemption from Minimum Wage Act for White-Collar Workers
This L&I administrative policy explains how to calculate the salary threshold that executive, administrative, professional, and salaried computer professional employees must meet to be exempt from the…
Definition of Fee Basis in Administrative, Professional and Outside Sales Positions
This short L&I administrative policy defines "fee basis" pay — a fixed charge for a single, unique job regardless of time spent, as opposed to hourly pay, piecework, bonuses, or commissions — which ca…
Questions and Answers About Salary Basis
This L&I administrative policy is a 23-question Q&A on the "salary basis" requirement that bona fide executive, administrative, professional, and computer professional employees must meet to be exempt…
How to Calculate Overtime
This L&I administrative policy is a worked-example companion to ES.A.8.1, showing exactly how to compute the "regular rate" and overtime owed under RCW 49.46.130 for different pay structures: a single…
Definition of Wage
This short L&I administrative policy defines "wage" under RCW 49.46.010(7) as compensation owed for employment, payable in legal tender or by check convertible to cash, or by an alternative method lik…
Variances from the Industrial Welfare Act
This brief L&I administrative policy explains that RCW 49.12.105 lets an employer apply to the L&I director for a variance from the department's Industrial Welfare Act rules (WAC 296-126) governing wa…
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These are official interpretive documents from Washington'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.