*Seshni Moodley is an admitted attorney, director of Seshni Moodley attorneys incorporated , with expertise in digital, civil and criminal law. She holds a masters in human rights law and is currently pursuing her PhD in human rights law.
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When your shift is called off with an hour’s notice and your rent is due tomorrow, a change in the law can mean the difference between paying the bills and going hungry.
That everyday risk is exactly what the Draft Basic Conditions of Employment Amendment Bill and the Draft Labour Relations Amendment Bill, 2025, aim to address. Together, they propose changes to core employment laws that determine the basic conditions of employees, how disputes are resolved, and what protections and remedies are available.
The Bills propose amendments to key pieces of employment legislation, including the Labour Relations Act (LRA), the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA), and the Employment Equity Act (EEA). These laws are the legal pillars that regulate unfair dismissals, working time and leave, pay equity, and minimum wages.
The existing maternity and parental leave provisions in the BCEA were ruled unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court because they discriminate between different classes of parents on the basis of the length of leave available.
In terms of the draft proposals, parents will be able to share parental leave. A single employed parent will be entitled to four months of parental leave, while two employed parents can share a total of four months and 10 days of leave.
Parental leave, if the reforms are passed, will now extend to adoptive parents (for children up to six years old) and commissioning parents in surrogate arrangements.
The proposed parental leave rules advance South Africa’s labour laws closer to what the Constitution already promises: that all parents should be treated equally and that families should be supported, not punished, when a child is born or adopted.
The proposed Section 9B of the BCEA would require employers to set out guaranteed hours, maximum hours, and reasonable notice periods for on-call and min-max contracts, while also introducing minimum pay guarantees.
This is a direct response to the insecurity faced by many workers in retail, hospitality, and platform work, who are often vulnerable to irregular hours, lack of guaranteed income, and last-minute cancellations.
In terms of the proposed reforms, employers must clearly specify in writing the guaranteed hours, maximum hours, availability periods, and reasonable notice periods for reporting to work or cancelling shifts.
If the reforms are passed, employers who cancel work without providing proper notice will be compelled to compensate employees for those lost hours. This will be a human rights win if enforced.
Amendments to the EEA are intended to prohibit employers from asking about past salaries and to require disclosure of remuneration ranges.
This is a human rights safeguard. Past salaries often reflect past discrimination. During apartheid, women, Black South Africans, people with disabilities, and workers who started in low-pay sectors were routinely paid less because of long-standing inequalities.
When employers base a new salary on an old one, they quietly carry those injustices forward.
The proposals aim to increase severance pay from the current one week’s remuneration for each completed year of service to two weeks’ remuneration per completed year of service.
This is not just a financial adjustment. It strengthens several core human rights principles embedded in South Africa’s Constitution. It protects workers’ dignity, cushions families from sudden poverty, and ensures that retrenchment does not punish those who lose their jobs through no fault of their own.
The reforms require that employees must be paid at least the legal minimum wage in real money they actually take home. Employers cannot consider deferred income, such as contributions to pension funds, in the calculation of the minimum wage.
Reinstatement or re-employment for high earners, except in cases of automatically unfair dismissal, will be removed.
Compensation for ordinary unfair dismissals will be capped at 12 months’ pay, with a maximum of R1,800,000 per year, adjusted annually for inflation.
Procedural shortcuts for dismissals during probation, and measures to prevent duplicate claims, may speed up dispute resolution, but they also risk eroding procedural fairness for vulnerable workers who often lack legal support.
South Africa’s labour law overhaul is more than a technical clean-up of old laws. It is a test of whether the country is willing to place human dignity, equality, and fairness at the centre of working life.
The proposed reforms contain real gains. These include stronger protections for workers with insecure jobs, modernised parental leave rights that finally recognise adoptive and commissioning parents, and improved severance benefits for those who lose their jobs through no fault of their own.
These are not small victories. They speak directly to the Constitution’s promise that every person deserves to work, raise a family, and live with dignity.
*The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper.*
DAILY NEWS