BCEA
Basic Conditions of Employment Act, 1997 (Act No. 75 of 1997)
The floor under every employment relationship in South Africa: how long a person may be required to work, what they must be given in writing, what their payslip must show, the leave they are owed, what may be taken off their pay, and what is due when they leave.
Sections
22
Duties
28
Questions
57
Assessment from
R 32 100
What it covers
The Basic Conditions of Employment Act sets the minimum terms of every employment relationship in South Africa. It cannot be contracted out of: section 5 says the Act is not affected by any agreement, and a term that gives an employee less than the Act does is simply replaced by the Act's own floor. Chapter 2 is the part that catches operating businesses. Ordinary hours are capped at 45 a week and nine a day, or eight a day for anybody working more than five days a week. Overtime is only lawful in terms of an agreement, is capped at ten hours a week, and may never take an employee past 12 hours in a day. It is paid at one and a half times the wage unless an agreement substitutes paid time off. A driver must have 12 consecutive hours off between shifts and 36 consecutive hours off each week. For a road transport operator those are not paperwork rules. The same roster that breaches section 9 is the roster that puts a tired driver on the N1, and a working time record that cannot be produced is the record an insurer and an inspector will both ask for after a crash. Section 7 is explicit that working time has to be regulated in accordance with occupational health and safety law and with due regard to the health and safety of employees, which makes fatigue an employment law question as well as a road traffic one. Chapter 4 is where most findings are actually made, because it is documentary and an inspector can test it in an afternoon. Written particulars must be given when employment starts and must list sixteen specific things. A record of the time worked and the remuneration paid must be kept for three years. A payslip must show seven items, and more where overtime or Sunday work is involved. Nothing may be deducted from an employee's pay without written agreement to a specified debt or a law, court order, arbitration award or collective agreement that permits it, and a deduction for loss or damage is lawful only after a fair procedure and never more than a quarter of the pay. Enforcement is administrative rather than criminal for almost all of it. Failing to pay overtime is not a crime; it produces a labour inspector, an undertaking, a compliance order, a fine calculated as a percentage of what is owed, and a CCMA arbitration award for the arrears. The cost is the arrears plus interest, multiplied by every employee in the same position, going back three years. Leave is in flux. On 3 October 2025 the Constitutional Court rewrote sections 25 to 25C, so parental leave is now four consecutive months for a single or sole-employed parent and four months and ten days shared where both parents are employed, whatever the old maternity and paternity labels said.
Does this apply to you?
This applies to you if you employ anybody, with almost no exceptions. It applies to a person who works for you whatever the contract calls them: section 83A presumes a person is an employee where any one of seven factors is present, so a driver you treat as a contractor may still be an employee for this Act's purposes, and the presumption is yours to rebut rather than theirs to prove.
Two carve-outs matter before you answer the working time questions. Chapter 2, except section 7, does not apply to senior managerial employees, to sales staff who travel to customers and set their own hours, or to anybody working fewer than 24 hours a month for you. Separately, the Minister has excluded employees earning above an annual earnings threshold from sections 9, 10, 11, 12, 14(1), 15(1), 16, 17(2) and 18(3). This record deliberately states no rand amount for that threshold. It is determined by the Minister under section 6(3) and revised by notice in the Gazette, so any figure printed here goes stale on a date nobody can predict, and a business that excluded an employee on the strength of a superseded number would have breached the sections it thought did not apply. Read the current determination under section 6(3) before you answer the working time questions, and apply the figure in force on the day you answer.
Section 7 applies to everybody including those exclusions, so the duty to regulate working time with due regard to health and safety covers a senior manager and a high earner even where the 45 hour cap does not.
Chapters 3, 4 and 5, which are leave, particulars, pay records, deductions and termination, apply to every employee regardless of earnings. Nobody is above the payslip rule.
If a sectoral determination or a bargaining council collective agreement covers your business, it may set terms better than this Act, and where it does the better term is the one that applies. Road freight and passenger transport are heavily covered by councils, so check before you assume this Act is your ceiling.
Where this text comes from
Transcribed 2026-10-19. Check the provision against the source before relying on it in a filing.
What non-compliance costs
Most of this Act is not criminal, which is why it is routinely underestimated. Section 93 makes only a short list of sections an offence: section 33A (prejudicing an employee for exercising a right) at up to three years, sections 43, 44, 46 and 48 (child labour and forced labour) at up to six years, and sections 90(1) and (3) and 92 at up to one year. Failing to pay overtime, keep records or give a payslip is not on that list.
What happens instead is a labour inspector. Under section 68 the inspector tries to secure a written undertaking; under section 69 the inspector issues a compliance order that names the provision breached, the amount owed to each employee, the steps required and the maximum fine. The order must be displayed at the workplace where the affected employees can read it.
The fines are in Schedule Two and they are per employee. Where no money is owed, Table One runs from R300 per employee for a first failure to R1 500 per employee after four previous failures on the same provision within three years. Where money is owed, Table Two is a percentage of the amount due including interest: 25 per cent for a first failure, rising to 200 per cent after four. The greater of the two applies.
The arrears themselves are the real exposure. Under section 73A an employee or worker earning below the threshold may refer a failure to pay any amount owing straight to the CCMA, which must start the arbitration immediately after certifying the dispute unresolved. Interest runs under section 75. Records must be kept for three years under section 31(2), which is also how far back a claim is comfortably provable, and the same roster that underpaid one driver underpaid every driver on it.
Underpaying the national minimum wage carries its own fine under section 76A, at twice the underpayment or twice the monthly wage, whichever is greater, and three times for a repeat. That belongs to the National Minimum Wage Act record, not this one.
What the assessment covers
The assessment works through 57 questions across 28 duties, scored out of 454. Each answer generates the specific actions needed to close or prove that duty, and a “yes” only counts once its evidence is in, which is what makes the score defensible rather than self-declared.
The questions themselves are part of the assessment.
Find out where you stand on BCEA
Run the assessment, get your score, and get the exact list of what to fix, with the evidence trail an auditor will ask for.