https://www.polity.org.za
Deepening Democracy through Access to Information
Home / Legal Briefs / All Legal Briefs RSS ← Back
Financial|Flow|Flow
Financial|Flow|Flow
financial|flow-company|flow-industry-term
Close

Email this article

separate emails by commas, maximum limit of 4 addresses

Sponsored by

Close

Article Enquiry

Late salary payments – Know your rights

Close

Embed Video

5

Late salary payments – Know your rights

Late salary payments – Know your rights

27th March 2019

ARTICLE ENQUIRY      SAVE THIS ARTICLE      EMAIL THIS ARTICLE

Font size: -+

The South African Labour Law allows employers leeway to pay their employees until the seventh day of the following month.
 
However, the majority of companies in South Africa have set a precedent by paying their employees by the 25th of the month, says Arlene Leggat, President of the South African Payroll Association (SAPA).
 
The law
The law stipulates that employers must pay their employees within seven days of the end of a pay period.
 
If we take March, the pay period is 1 March to 31 March, therefore the employer legally has until 7 April to pay his employees.
 
The precedent
In South Africa there is a precedent to pay employees on the 25th of each month and in the light of that, people have organised to have their debit orders go off from the 26th of each month.
 
“In effect it does not give payroll any leeway. If people are not paid on the 25th they can get into trouble because they may not have sufficient funds to honour their debit orders.”
 
Although employers are not legally obliged to pay their employees on the 25th of each month they have created an expectation that they will.
 
“Companies are now obliged to meet the expectation that has been created. You really have to pay your employees at the 25th of each month, because people have so much dependent on it.”
 
Financial distress
South African companies have been suffering financial difficulties because of the lack of economic growth. Cash flow problems have led to some being unable to pay their staff on time.

“It does happen more often than we want to believe, and it does happen to a lot of smaller companies. I do not understand why, but for some reason people think they can delay payment to small businesses, and they can’t.”
 
Any debtor who delays payment to a small company is putting their employees at risk.
 
Late payment
It is extremely rare to have an entire company’s payroll being paid late. “You may find that one or two people are being paid late because their paperwork did not arrive on time,” says Leggat.
 
Payroll administrators may not have been alerted to a new employee on time, and the paperwork is not done timeously. This happens quite often, she Leggat.
 
Habitual late payer
Employees who find their employer habitually pays a day or two late, find themselves in a difficult position.
 
The company is not breaking the law, because they have the seven-day leeway.
 
However, employees should use their employee forums, employee representatives or unions to take the matter up with the human resource department or even management.
 
The employee has very little recourse if they are not paid “on time”, as long as they are paid by the 7th of the next month.
 
“My recommendation to all employees is to ensure that their debit orders go off at the first of the next month. That gives everybody a little bit of time when payment is a day or two late.”

Advertisement

Issued by the South African Payroll Association

To watch Creamer Media's latest video reports, click here
 
Advertisement

EMAIL THIS ARTICLE      SAVE THIS ARTICLE ARTICLE ENQUIRY

To subscribe email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za or click here
To advertise email advertising@creamermedia.co.za or click here

Comment Guidelines

About

Polity.org.za is a product of Creamer Media.
www.creamermedia.co.za

Other Creamer Media Products include:
Engineering News
Mining Weekly
Research Channel Africa

Read more

Subscriptions

We offer a variety of subscriptions to our Magazine, Website, PDF Reports and our photo library.

Subscriptions are available via the Creamer Media Store.

View store

Advertise

Advertising on Polity.org.za is an effective way to build and consolidate a company's profile among clients and prospective clients. Email advertising@creamermedia.co.za

View options

Email Registration Success

Thank you, you have successfully subscribed to one or more of Creamer Media’s email newsletters. You should start receiving the email newsletters in due course.

Our email newsletters may land in your junk or spam folder. To prevent this, kindly add newsletters@creamermedia.co.za to your address book or safe sender list. If you experience any issues with the receipt of our email newsletters, please email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za