According to article 9 of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, the normal maximum working time of an employee below the threshold* is 45 hours per week. This would mean a maximum of nine hours per day if the employee works five days or less per week, and eight hours per day if the employee works more than five days per week. Average: A collective agreement can allow you to average your hours of work over a period of up to 4 months. If you agree, an employee cannot work more than 45 regular hours per week on average and 5 hours of overtime per week. A collective averaging agreement must be renegotiated each year. If you are employed full-time for more than 4 months, you can take 3 days of paid leave per year for family responsibilities if your An employee who is an instructor parent in a surrogacy arrangement is entitled to at least ten weeks of consecutive parental leave; or ten consecutive days of parental leave if the child was born on the basis of a surrogacy agreement. Section 25C of the Labour Code. An employer may require an employee to work on a general holiday only in accordance with an agreement. If a public holiday falls on a normal working day and he does not work on that holiday, he is entitled to payment of his normal daily wage. By agreement, the employer may grant an employee leave with pay for overtime worked instead of paying the employee. The employee is then entitled to 90 minutes of paid leave for every 60 hours of overtime worked. The agreed paid leave must be granted to the employee within one month of overtime, but by agreement, this period may be extended to 12 months. Night work after 6 p.m.
and before 6 a.m. is voluntary. Employees must receive additional pay or reduced working hours. Workers must have transportation to and from work. The law is not clear who must “provide or pay” for such transportation. The ECB stipulates that employers cannot require their employees to work more than 45 hours per week. In addition, employees cannot work more than 9 hours per day if they work 5 days or less per week; or 8 hours per day if the employee works more than 5 days per week. Even on public holidays, these workers cannot be forced to work on a public holiday, except by appointment, and if they work on the public holiday, they must receive double the day`s wages, even if their normal position falls on the public holiday. If they do not work on the public holiday, they are entitled to their normal daily wage. Employees are entitled to a public holiday that falls on a day on which they would normally have worked – even if they are free on the public holiday and do not work.
An employee may agree to work on a statutory holiday, but it is voluntary. If an employee agrees to work, he must be granted a normal day off or he must receive double the normal hourly rate for the number of hours worked during the day. If an employee`s shift falls on a Sunday and another day, the entire shift is deemed to have been worked on Sunday. unless most of the shift has been completed recently. In this case, the entire shift is deemed to have ended the other day. Working hours may be extended by agreement between the employer and the employee, but not more than one hour per week. Some sectors allow 46 hours of work per week. The main objective of the law remains an 8-hour day with a 40-hour week.
Employees who are paid by the hour are paid for the hours they work, and if they can`t work more than 8 hours a day, that`s the maximum number of hours they can earn. Therefore, an employee who works 5 days a week and receives a one-hour meal break a day will actually be at work 50 hours a week (45 hours of normal working time plus 5 hours of daily meal breaks). The meal break is granted after five hours of continuous working time. Tea breaks are not considered work breaks. The legal meal break is 1 hour, but can be reduced to 30 minutes by agreement between the employee and the employer. You can take up to 21 consecutive days of annual leave or, by appointment, 1 day for 17 working days or 1 hour for 17 hours of work. The same applies to work on public holidays in accordance with § 18 paragraph 3 and Sunday work. The employee who earns above the threshold cannot demand and must therefore negotiate. This does not mean that the employee normally has to work 45 hours a week. Normal hours of work are a contractual agreement between the employer and the employee.
For example, some employees work only 40 hours a week. The legal limit of 45 hours per week means that the employee cannot work more than 45 hours per week in normal times. Employees earning above the threshold must negotiate with the employer the normal hours of work per day or per week. Therefore, the employee can be expected to work more than 45 hours per week. There are 12 paid public holidays under the Public Holidays Act. Public holidays in South Africa are as follows: Under the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA), the maximum normal working time is 45 hours per week. This is nine hours a day (without lunch break) if the employee works five days a week, and eight hours a day (without lunch break) if the employee works more than 5 days a week. The BCEA allows a certain flexibility in the organisation of working time by an agreement between employer and employee (collective agreement) or employee (individual agreement): the maximum amount of overtime allowed is three hours in one day or 10 hours per week. The remuneration must be equal to 1.5 times the normal rate of pay, with the exception of Sunday work and work on public holidays, which must be paid twice the normal rate of pay. If an employee`s shift falls on a public holiday and another day, the entire shift is considered to have been worked on the holiday, but if most of the shift was worked on the other day, the entire shift is considered to have been worked on the other day.
If a public holiday falls on a Sunday, the following Monday is considered a holiday. §§ 2, 3 and 5 of the Public Holidays Act, § 18 of the Employment Act as amended in 2020. Under Article 14 of the BCEA, workers who work more than five continuous hours per day must be granted a meal break (or lunch break) of at least one uninterrupted hour. For the purposes of the law, “uninterrupted” time of five hours means that there is no interruption of 60 minutes (lunch break is unpaid time) or more during those five hours. Therefore, an employee who works five days a week and has a one-hour lunch break each day is at work 50 hours a week (45 hours of normal working time plus five hours for daily lunch breaks). An employee who is the parent of a child is entitled to at least 10 consecutive days of parental leave without pay. An employee may begin parental leave on the day of the child`s birth; or the date on which the adoption order is made; or that a child be entrusted to the care of an prospective adoptive parent by a competent court until an adoption decision concerning that child is finally made, whichever comes first. The employer must pay an employee a public holiday indemnity at least equal to the remuneration that the employee would have received during a period corresponding to the annual leave, calculated at the employee`s rate of pay immediately before the beginning of the annual leave, and at the normal rate of pay. For the calculation of an employee`s holiday pay or severance pay: South African labour legislation consists of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act No. 75 of 1997 (BCEA); Employment Equity Act No. 55 of 1998 (EEE) and Industrial Relations Act No.
66 of 1995 (LRA). These laws cover several aspects of labour law, but for the purposes of this article, the Basic Conditions of Employment Act No. 75 of 1997 (BCEA) is the legal act of interest. Article 9 of the BCEA sets the normal working hours of an employee. The BCEA states: “An employer may not require or permit an employee to work more than (a) 45 hours per week; (b) nine hours a day if the worker works five days or less a week; or (c) eight hours a day if the employee works more than five days a week.” The law sets clear limits on workers` working hours and ensures that working hours in excess of these hours may not be legally enforceable in an employment contract. It should always be borne in mind that it is not possible to conclude contracts outside the law. This means that a contract, whether it is an employment contract or a contract of any other nature, cannot attempt to include clauses that violate the law. Every employer in South Africa must regulate the working hours of each employee; Compressed work week: You can agree to work up to 12 hours a day without paid overtime.
