Family Responsibility Leave: Three Days, and Exactly Who Gets Them

Three paid days, for two kinds of event

Family responsibility leave is three days of paid leave in each annual leave cycle, under section 27 of the BCEA. It applies to employees who have worked for you for longer than four months and who work at least four days a week. It may be taken when the employee’s child is sick, or when a close family member dies.

That is the whole of it, and it is narrower than most people assume. It is not general compassionate leave, it is not carer’s leave for a sick parent or spouse, and since 2020 it is not paternity leave. The phone call you are probably holding right now falls into one of three answers: it qualifies, it qualifies only if your own policy says so, or it is annual or unpaid leave.

What qualifies as family responsibility leave

Section 27(2) lists the events. There are two kinds.

When the employee’s child is sick

The employee’s own child, including an adopted child. The Act sets no age limit. It covers looking after the child, not the employee’s own illness, which is sick leave under section 22 with its own 36-month cycle.

On the death of a close family member

• A spouse or life partner
• A parent or adoptive parent
• A grandparent
• A child or adopted child
• A grandchild
• A sibling

What is not on the list

In-laws, aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews. A sick spouse, a sick parent, a hospitalised sibling. The birth of a child, which section 27(2)(a) covered until the Labour Laws Amendment Act of 2018 repealed it and parental leave took its place. Any of these can be granted under your own policy, as annual leave, or as unpaid leave, but none of them is a statutory entitlement. If you grant one, put it in the leave policy, or the first manager who refuses it will be measured against the one who did not.

The family responsibility leave cycle

The three days attach to the annual leave cycle: each 12 months of employment, counted from the employee’s start date, not the calendar year. Days not used by the end of the cycle lapse (section 27(6)). They do not carry over, and they are never paid out when the employee leaves.

Many businesses run leave on a calendar year for convenience. That is fine for administration, provided no employee ends up with fewer days in any 12-month cycle than the Act gives. The safest way to see it is per person, from the start date.

Had the same call come on 25 June, the employee would have been inside the first four months and had no statutory entitlement. That is when the decision becomes a policy question, not a legal one.

Can an employer ask for proof, and what do you pay?

Yes, you may ask for reasonable proof before paying (section 27(5)). For a death, a death certificate, a death notice or the funeral programme. For a sick child, a note from the doctor or clinic. What is reasonable depends on what the employee can actually get: a rural funeral may produce a programme and nothing else.

Pay is the wage the employee would ordinarily have earned that day, on the ordinary payday (section 27(3)). It is not unpaid leave with a fancy name, and it does not come out of the annual leave balance. Part days are allowed (section 27(4)), so a parent who collects a sick child at noon uses half a day, not a whole one.

Record it on a leave application form with the reason and the proof attached, and update the balance the same day. The dispute that reaches a commissioner is rarely about whether three days were owed. It is about whether this employee was treated like the last one.

Domestic workers get five days, not three

Domestic workers are covered by Sectoral Determination 7, and its clause 21 is more generous than the BCEA. A domestic worker employed for longer than four months, working at least four days a week, gets five days of family responsibility leave in each 12-month cycle, and the determination still lists the birth of the worker’s child as a qualifying event.

A household employer who applies the three-day BCEA rule is short by two days. Put the correct figure in the domestic worker contract, and confirm the current text of the determination when you do.

When the funeral is further away than three days

A funeral in another province can take a week. The Act gives three days and stops there, so the rest is annual leave or unpaid leave, by agreement. Three practical rules keep this from becoming a grievance:

• Offer annual leave first. Most employees prefer paid days, and annual leave may be taken at a time agreed between you (section 20(10)).
• Approve unpaid leave in writing, with the dates, before it starts. Unapproved days that run on become an absence question, and an absence question handled badly becomes an abscondment dispute.
• Apply the same rule to everyone. Discretion exercised differently for two employees is the most common way a kind decision turns into an unfair labour practice claim.

Can an employer refuse family responsibility leave?

Not when the conditions are met. Section 27 says the employer must grant the leave at the employee’s request, so a qualifying employee with a qualifying event and reasonable proof is entitled to it, busy week or not. What you can refuse is leave that does not qualify: a fourth day in the cycle, an in-law’s funeral with no policy behind it, or a request from someone who works three days a week.

A collective agreement can change the number of days and the qualifying events (section 27(7)), so check any bargaining council agreement that binds you before you decide.

Five mistakes employers make with family responsibility leave

The rule is simple. The record is not.

Three days per cycle sounds easy until the cycle runs from forty different start dates, the proof sits in a WhatsApp chat, and two managers have made two different calls about an in-law’s funeral. Synthro holds each leave type as its own balance on its own cycle, attaches the proof to the request, and applies your policy the same way for everyone.

Frequently Asked Questions