Almost every overtime dispute is really an argument about where ordinary hours ended. Settle that and the money follows; leave it vague and you will be reconstructing six months of half-remembered evenings.
Ordinary hours
The ceiling is 45 hours a week. Within that:
- nine hours a day if they work five days a week or fewer
- eight hours a day if they work more than five days a week
That is the ordinary-time limit, not a target. If they are contracted for 40 hours, 40 is their normal week and the 45 is simply the point beyond which no arrangement can go without becoming overtime.
Overtime, and the cap that differs
Overtime is only by agreement. There is no instruction that creates an obligation to work it.
The weekly cap is one of the places where household and business answers part company, so be careful which one you are reading:
- Under the BCEA (section 10), overtime is capped at 10 hours a week.
- Under Sectoral Determination 7 (clause 10), a domestic worker may work up to 15 hours a week of overtime, and no more than 12 hours on any day including overtime.
If you employ someone in your home, the SD7 figure is yours. If you employ someone in a business, the BCEA figure is. Quoting one number for both is a common error, and this article is one of the few places you will see them separated.
Overtime is paid at one and a half times their normal wage. By agreement, they may take paid time off instead.
Sunday work
Sunday has its own rate, separate from overtime:
- If they do not ordinarily work Sundays: double their normal wage for the work.
- If they does ordinarily work Sundays: one and a half times.
Do not stack a Sunday rate on top of an overtime rate for the same hours by default. They are different premiums for different facts, and hours can be both only if they have genuinely also exceeded their ordinary weekly hours.
Public holidays are different again, and we cover those in public holiday pay.
Breaks and rest
These exist, they are compulsory, and virtually nobody records them.
- Meal interval: one continuous hour after five hours of continuous work. It can be reduced to 30 minutes by written agreement. It is unpaid, unless they are required to remain at the workplace or to be available for work during it, in which case it is paid.
- Daily rest: 12 consecutive hours between finishing and starting again.
- Weekly rest: 36 consecutive hours, normally including a Sunday.
The meal interval one matters for pay. A live-in worker who eats lunch on the premises because they have nowhere else to go, and who is expected to answer the door while they do, is not on an unpaid break. They are working, and that hour is paid.
The hourly rate you are probably calculating wrong
To price overtime you need their normal hourly rate, and there is one correct route from a monthly salary. Section 35(4) of the BCEA:
- Weekly = monthly divided by 4.333
- Daily = weekly divided by the days they work in a week
- Hourly = weekly divided by the hours they work in a week
On R6,500 a month, five days, 45 hours:
- R6,500 divided by 4.333 = R1,500.12 a week
- R1,500.12 divided by 5 = R300.02 a day
- R1,500.12 divided by 45 = R33.34 an hour
- Overtime at 1.5 times = R50.01 an hour
The wrong method, and it is the intuitive one, is to divide the monthly salary by the number of working days in that particular calendar month. It produces a different daily rate in February than in March for identical work, and it will disagree with the rate used elsewhere on the same payslip. One salary must produce one daily rate all year.
You can check any of this against our free overtime calculator, and overtime pay goes through the rates in more detail.
Against the minimum wage
The national minimum wage is R30.23 an hour from 1 March 2026, and domestic workers are on the full rate.
That is an hourly floor, which means a monthly salary has to be tested against the hours actually worked. R6,500 for 45 hours a week works out at R33.34 an hour, comfortably above. The same R6,500 for 60 hours a week is R25.00 an hour, which is below the minimum and unlawful, even though the monthly figure looks generous.
This is exactly why hours have to be recorded rather than assumed. A salary is only compliant relative to the hours behind it, and "they work whatever hours are needed" is not a number you can defend. See the minimum wage for the full picture.
What to record
Start time, finish time, and the meal break. That is it, and it answers every question above: ordinary hours, overtime, Sunday premiums, the hourly rate test against the minimum wage.
Without it you are negotiating from memory against someone whose memory is just as good as yours and whose interest points the other way.
WageDesk can track hours as they happen, with the employee logging their own start and finish, the employer approving them, and the approved hours feeding straight into the payslip at the rate their contract implies. The point is not the tracking. It is that the number on the payslip has a record behind it.
This article explains the law in general terms and is not legal advice.