Virginia Law

All occupations in or about any coal mine are prohibited except the occupation of slate or other refuse picking at a picking table or picking chute in a tipple or breaker and occupations requiring the performance of duties solely in offices or in repair or maintenance shops located in the surface part of any coal-mining plant.

Definitions:

The term "coal" shall mean any rank of coal, including lignite, bituminous, and anthracite coals.

The term "all occupations in or about any coal mine" shall mean all types of work performed in any underground working, open pit, or surface part of any coal-mining plant that contributes to the extraction, grading, cleaning, or other handling of coal.

All occupations in connection with any mining operation are prohibited, except the following:

1. Work in offices, in the warehouse or supply house, in the change house, in the laboratory, and in repair or maintenance shops not located underground.

2. Work in the operation and maintenance of living quarters.

3. Work outside the mine in surveying, in the repair and maintenance of roads, and in general clean-up about the mine property such as clearing brush and digging drainage ditches.

4. Work of track crews in the building and maintaining of sections of railroad tracks located in those areas of open-cut metal mines where mining and haulage activities are not being conducted at the time and place that such building and maintenance work is being done.

5. Work in or about surface placer mining operations other than placer dredging operations and hydraulic placer mining operations.

6. The following work in metal mills other than in mercury-recovery mills or mills using the cyanide process:

(a) Work involving the operation of jigs, sludge tables, flotation cells, or drier-filters.

(b) Work of hand sorting at picking table or picking belt.

(c) General clean-up work.