{"id":91996,"date":"2015-07-01T23:55:55","date_gmt":"2015-07-01T21:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=91996"},"modified":"2015-07-01T17:15:24","modified_gmt":"2015-07-01T15:15:24","slug":"do-you-have-to-pay-your-employees-during-load-shedding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/91996\/do-you-have-to-pay-your-employees-during-load-shedding\/","title":{"rendered":"Do you have to pay your employees during load shedding?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Commercial law firm, Werksmans Attorneys, has published information<\/a> about how employers should deal with employees and the loss of productivity as a result of load shedding.<\/p>\n

The legal firm says that many employers are under the impression that when employees are unable to work due to load shedding the \u2018no work, no pay\u2019 principle applies.<\/p>\n

“This is not the case,” the firm said.<\/p>\n

“Our common and labour laws are clear \u2013 if the employer expects the employees to be at work at a specific time and on a specific day and the employees comply with these requirements, the employer is obliged to pay them for that time.”<\/p>\n

“This is regardless of whether the employees were able to perform their duties or not.”<\/p>\n

But this does not mean that employees get a free pass and employers must bear\u00a0the burden and simply pay up, as there are ways for employers to minimize the impact of these outages on labour costs.<\/p>\n

According to Werksmans, a strategy available to some employers is to rely on agreed procedures that apply to interruptions of production\u00a0–\u00a0such as those seen in the metal and engineering industries.<\/p>\n

It is important that employers and employees understand the serious implications load shedding has on both sides<\/div>\n

These industries have come to an agreement with employees on how to deal with power down time\u00a0– specifically by\u00a0differentiating between planned and unplanned load shedding.<\/p>\n