Overtime is one of the easiest things to get wrong on a South African wage, and one of the most common reasons for a CCMA dispute. The rules come from the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA), and once you know the three rates below, the maths is simple.
The normal working week
Under the BCEA, ordinary hours are capped at 45 hours a week for most employees. That usually works out to nine hours a day over a five-day week, or eight hours a day over a six-day week. Anything worked beyond ordinary hours is overtime.
Overtime is voluntary and must be by agreement. There is also a weekly ceiling, and this is one of the places where the answer depends on who you employ:
- Under the BCEA (section 10), overtime is limited to 10 hours a week.
- Under Sectoral Determination 7 (clause 10), a domestic worker may work up to 15 hours a week of overtime.
Either way, an employee cannot be forced to work more than 12 hours in a single day.
The three overtime rates
- Ordinary overtime: 1.5x. Any hours beyond the normal daily or weekly limit are paid at one-and-a-half times the normal hourly rate.
- Sunday work: 2x (or 1.5x). If the employee does not normally work Sundays, Sunday work is paid at double the normal rate. If Sunday is a normal working day for them, it is paid at 1.5x.
- Public holidays: not a simple multiple. This one has two cases and they are easy to swap. If the holiday falls on a day they would normally work and they work it, they get at least double the daily wage in total — double, not double plus the day's wage on top. If it falls on a day they would not normally work and they work it, they get their normal daily wage plus pay for the hours actually worked. If they do not work it at all and it falls on a normal working day, they are paid their normal day's pay anyway.
Working out the hourly rate
Overtime is calculated off the normal hourly rate. If you pay a monthly salary, divide it by the ordinary hours in the month. For a 45-hour week that is roughly 195 hours a month (45 x 52 / 12).
So a worker on R6,000 a month has an hourly rate of about R6,000 / 195 = R30.77 an hour.
A worked example
Say that worker does 6 hours of ordinary overtime and works one public holiday (8 hours) that they would not normally work:
- 6 overtime hours x R30.77 x 1.5 = R276.93
- 8 public-holiday hours on a day they would not normally work: a normal daily wage (8 x R30.77) plus the hours worked (8 x R30.77) = R492.32
- Extra pay for the week: R769.25
You can run any hourly rate through our free BCEA overtime calculator to see the 1.5x and 2x figures instantly, with no signup.
Keeping the record straight
The BCEA requires you to keep a record of hours worked and payments made. If a dispute ever reaches the CCMA, that record is what protects you. Logging overtime as it happens — rather than reconstructing it at month-end — is the single best habit an employer can build.
WageDesk lets your staff log overtime straight from WhatsApp, you approve it with one tap, and it flows onto the payslip automatically — so the record and the payslip always agree.