On the Job with Wouter Booysen: Normal Workers Must be Paid Extra for Sundays
www.MyPE.co.za: I
received an e-mail from a concerned reader who works as a shift
worker and is paid his salary on a monthly basis.
From time to time, his employer requires that he works on a
Sunday. On these occasions, he is paid only for his normal
day’s work and receives no additional remuneration.
As far as he knows, a Sunday is viewed as a rest day and after reading
through the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA) he noticed that
if an employee is expected to work on a Sunday, his employer should pay
him one and a half times his hourly wage.
At present, his employer only pays hourly paid shift workers one and a
half times their (hourly) wage for working on a Sunday. Employees (such
as our reader) who are paid monthly and are expected to work on a
Sunday, only receive their normal pay.
Our reader is keen to find out if he should indeed be receiving extra
remuneration for his Sunday work. He is also interested to
find out if there are any exceptions to the rule – in other words where
employees do not qualify for extra pay for overtime worked.
The BCEA in fact states than an employer must pay an employee who works
on a Sunday double the employee’s wage for each hour worked, unless the
employee ordinarily works on a Sunday. In this case, the employer must
pay the employee one and a half times his wage for each hour worked.
If, when working on a Sunday, the employee works fewer hours than his
ordinary shift, his employer only needs to pay him his ordinary daily
wage.
Letting employees work on Sundays can be very costly to employers. The
only way an employer can avoid paying time and a half or double for
work done on a Sunday, would be if he concludes an agreement with the
employees or their unions in terms of which the employees are given
time off in lieu of overtime worked.
So, if employees are paid normal rates on a Sunday (such as in the case
of our reader), they must be given time off on normal pay.
The time off must be given within one month of the Sunday in question,
unless the employee agrees to take it after a longer period.
Wouter Booysen from
Booysen & Rossouw Attorneys
says in answer to our reader’s question whether there
are instances where employees will not be paid for overtime worked,
that the the answer is yes.
These include senior managerial employees, sales staff who travel to
premises of customers and who regulate their own working hours,
employees who work less than 24 hours per month and employees who earn
more than R149 736 per annum.
A warning to employers though is that despite what the BCEA says, if he
has contractually agreed to pay overtime, he is bound by that agreement.
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