Guidance Search
The Department of Labor provides this guidance search tool as a single, searchable location where users may search for guidance issued by any of the Department’s agencies, including significant guidance documents under Executive Order 12866. Individual guidance documents are maintained on the various agency websites, and if you know what agency you are looking for, you may also find guidance by navigating directly to that agency’s website. The Code of Federal Regulations and the Federal Register, which are not maintained by the Department, also include some of the Department’s interpretations of law and similar material.
The Department and its agencies issue guidance to provide clarifying information and technical assistance to the public on existing statutory and regulatory rights and obligations, inform the regulated community about best practices, and provide other useful information. The contents of these documents do not have the force and effect of law and are not meant to bind the public in any way, except as authorized by law or incorporated into a contract, cooperative agreement, or grant.
Members of the public may petition the Department to modify or withdraw specific guidance documents. To petition for a significant guidance document to be created, modified, reconsidered, or rescinded, email the Department of Labor.
Petitions to Modify or Withdraw a DOL guidance document may also be submitted by mail at the address below. Petitions should identify the specific guidance document by name and include your reason(s) for requesting withdrawal or modification.
U.S. Department of Labor
Office of the Executive Secretariat
200 Constitution Ave NW
Washington, DC 20210
Search Tips
- If you are searching using an acronym, try a second search with the acronym spelled out. For example, if you are searching for guidance related to the Davis-Bacon Act, try searching "Davis-Bacon Act" as well as "DBA".
- For more specific results, use quotation marks around phrases.
- For more general results, remove quotation marks to search for each word individually. For example, minimum wage will return all documents that have either the word minimum or the word wage in the description, while “minimum wage” will limit results to those containing that phrase.
This letter discusses whether an employment relationship exists between an individual free to select a child(from a list furnished by the Division of Family Services) and the Division of Family Services, and if one exists between the Division of Family Services and a husband and wife who agree to become foster parents on a voluntary basis and receives payment.
This letter advises that, if the parent selects and, in fact, is free to select and make the necessary arrangements with the babysitter, an employer-employee relationship would not exist for purposes of the Act as between the county welfare department and the babysitters. The letter cautions that parents would be responsible for complying with the FLSA for any full time child-care service performed in or about the private household of the parent.
Whether a severance pay plan that pays benefits full-time, salaried officers, agents, and dispatchers of a council and participating locals upon termination of employment is covered under ERISA.
This letter advised that livestock brand inspectors are not engaged in the primary agricultural activity of raising livestock, such as breeding, feeding and general care of livestock, and that their activities do not come within the scope of that part of the definition of agriculture relating to secondary agriculture. Therefore the agricultural exemption for overtime would not apply.
Use of stilts. - [1926.500]
Whether ERISA will in any way discriminate women as a class.
This letter advised that contributions for and receipts from "educational, eleemosynary, or religious activities" are not included in an organization's annual gross volume when determining FLSA enterprise coverage, and discusses income from recreational facilities (such as a swimming pool or gymnasium) are included. It also discusses individual coverage and the application of 13(a)(3) to a summer day camp operated as a separate establishment.
This letter advised that a municipal recreational area that is funded through city or state taxes would not qualify for the section 13(a)(3) exemption as such funds are not "receipts" of the type required by the exemption. The letter further advised that the exemption would not apply to maintenance crews who work out of central location to clean all a city's parks, even if all the parks qualified for exemption under section 13(a)(3).
The FLSA applies to government run parks and recreation departments and the youth employed in its training program are entitled to the provisions of the FLSA. Some youth may be exempt from minimum wage and overtime under the section 13(a)(3) seasonal and recreational establishment exemption. Fourteen and fifteen year old's hours and times worked are subject to child labor regulation 3 standards.
DOL reminder that Reorganization Plan 14 of 1950 vests primary enforcement responsibility with contracting agencies.
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