South Africa Annual & Sick Leave Calculator (BCEA)

About the South Africa Annual & Sick Leave Calculator (BCEA)

Employees in South Africa get at least 21 consecutive days of paid annual leave in each 12-month leave cycle under the Basic Conditions of Employment Act — three weeks of their working days, so 15 days on a five-day week and 18 on a six-day week — or, by agreement, one day for every 17 days worked (or one hour for every 17 hours). Sick leave runs in 36-month cycles: the days you would normally work in six weeks (30 days on a five-day week), with one day for every 26 days worked in the first six months.

Enter your first day of work, the day to count to and the days you work each week. The calculator finds your annual and sick leave cycles, the leave earned so far and what is left, your family responsibility leave, what the leave is worth and, when the job ends, the leave the employer must pay out. Plan a leave to see the day you are back at work, with public holidays on working days not counted as leave. Nothing you type leaves your browser.

Without a pass the page gives a free preview of your own result: your leave cycles, the rules and the checks, with the annual leave you have now and every other figure hidden until you unlock it with a Pro pass.

Annual leave

The annual leave cycle is the 12 months from your first day of work, and then each 12 months after it. In each cycle the employer must grant at least 21 consecutive days on full pay, or by agreement one day for every 17 days on which you worked or were entitled to be paid (one hour for every 17 hours). You may take it on consecutive days, and the employer must grant it within six months after the cycle ends, at a time you agree or, failing that, one the employer decides (BCEA, section 20).

The employer may not make you take annual leave during other leave or during a notice period, must add a day for each public holiday on a working day during your leave, may not let you work during it, and may not pay you instead of granting it except when the job ends. Leave pay is your normal remuneration for the period, paid before the leave starts or, by agreement, on your usual payday (section 21). Even a bargaining council’s collective agreement cannot reduce annual leave to less than two weeks.

Sick leave

The sick leave cycle is 36 months from your first day of work. In each cycle you may take paid sick leave equal to the days you would normally work in six weeks: 30 days on a five-day week, 36 on a six-day week. During the first six months you earn one day for every 26 days worked, and the employer may take those days off the first cycle’s total (section 22). A day of sick leave is paid at the wage you would have earned that day, on your usual payday; an agreement may pay less a day (at least 75%) only if it gives more days.

The employer may ask for a medical certificate before paying when you are away for more than two days in a row, or more than twice in eight weeks (section 23). Injuries and diseases at work fall under the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act instead.

Family responsibility leave

After more than four months with the employer, an employee who works at least four days a week gets three days of paid leave in each annual leave cycle when their child is sick, or on the death of a spouse or life partner, a parent, adoptive parent, grandparent, child, adopted child, grandchild or sibling. It may be taken for a whole or part of a day, the employer may ask for reasonable proof, and unused days lapse at the end of the cycle (section 27). Leave on the birth of a child is now parental leave rather than family responsibility leave (Labour Laws Amendment Act).

Leave when the job ends

On leaving, the employer must pay the annual leave still due from earlier cycles and, once you have been employed for longer than four months, leave for the unfinished cycle: one day’s pay for every 17 days worked or paid, or more on a better basis (section 40). Sick leave and family responsibility leave are not paid out. The severance pay calculator adds the leave pay to the notice and severance pay owed on a retrenchment.

Maternity and parental leave

The Act gives at least four consecutive months of maternity leave and ten days of parental leave. The Constitutional Court has declared those sections invalid and, until Parliament changes the Act, reads them as four months and ten days of leave that the parents share, the mother having preference for the time around the birth (judgment). The UIF pays benefits for this leave; the UIF calculator estimates them.

Overtime

Overtime needs an agreement, may not exceed 10 hours a week, and is paid at least one and a half times the wage — or, by agreement, partly or wholly as paid time off (section 10). These working-time rules do not cover employees who earn more than the BCEA earnings threshold, R269 600,90 a year (determination); leave applies to everyone who works 24 hours a month or more.

Other countries

Annual leave elsewhere: United Kingdom, Australia and the UAE.

Limitations

• The Act’s minimum: a contract, a collective agreement or a sectoral determination can give more or set its own rules.
• Days worked are counted from the weekdays you tick; shifts that change from week to week are not modelled, so enter the days of your usual week.
• Annual leave is earned at one day per 17 days worked or paid, in whole days, which is the Act’s minimum on leaving; an employer that accrues it another way may show a slightly different balance.
• Maternity, parental, adoption and commissioning parental leave are not worked out.
• Public holidays are those of the Public Holidays Act, with a Sunday holiday moved to the Monday; a day the President declares for one year is not included.

Privacy

Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot.