Labour Law Amendment Bill 2026: What Would Change, and What Already Has

Two Bills, published for comment, not yet law

On 27 February 2026 the Minister of Employment and Labour published the Labour Law Amendment Bill and the Labour Relations Amendment Bill for public comment. Together they would amend five Acts: the LRA, the BCEA, the Employment Equity Act, the National Minimum Wage Act and the Unemployment Insurance Act.

They are drafts. As at 12 October 2026 we could find no record of either being passed, and their terms can still change. So nothing below changes what you pay or how you dismiss today. What it changes is what you should be getting ready to prove, because almost every proposal is calculated from service dates, contract terms and records that most small businesses cannot produce in one place.

Severance pay would double, but only going forward

The headline proposal: retrenchment severance under section 41 of the BCEA would rise from one week’s to two weeks’ remuneration per completed year of service. The increase would apply only to years completed after the amendment takes effect, so service before that date keeps the one-week rate. Severance-only disputes, where the fairness of the retrenchment is not challenged, could go straight to CCMA arbitration.

That calculation needs one fact nobody thinks about until the day: the exact start date, and whether service carried over from a fixed-term contract or a section 197 transfer. Until the Bill is law, use the retrenchment calculator at today’s one-week rate.

Proposed changes to unfair dismissal

• Probation. Employees in their first three months, or during a longer probation period, could not bring an unfair dismissal claim. Today they can. Read the probation guide for the current rules.
• High earners. Employees earning more than R1.8 million a year could not be reinstated after an unfair dismissal, unless it was automatically unfair. They could still claim compensation.
• A second compensation cap. An earnings-linked cap, adjusted annually by CPI and gazetted, would sit on top of the existing 12-month maximum for unfair dismissal and unfair labour practice awards.
• Procedure, in one sentence. For misconduct and incapacity, a fair procedure would mean giving the employee a reasonable opportunity to respond to the reason for dismissal. That matches the direction of the 2025 Code of Good Practice: Dismissal, which is already in force.
• One claim, one route. Employees could not pursue both an unlawfulness claim and an unfairness claim on the same facts.

A wider definition of employee, and rules for on-call work

The Bills would presume a person to be an employee unless the employer shows they are not under its control and direction, not part of its organisation, and not serving its customers on its terms. A new LRA schedule would extend organisational and bargaining rights to some workers who are not employees in the strict sense.

On-call, zero-hours and if-and-when contracts

For employers with more than 10 employees, the Bill proposes:

• maximum hours, availability periods and notice periods, recorded in writing;
• payment for hours cancelled without the agreed notice;
• a ban on outside work only for a genuine, written operational reason;
• one day of paid sick leave for every 26 days worked;
• no less favourable treatment than comparable employees without justification.

If you roster casual or on-call staff, the question to ask now is whether you could produce their hours and cancellations for the last three months. The BCEA already requires those records to be kept for three years (section 31).

Parental leave: mostly in force already

The Bill would write the Constitutional Court’s Van Wyk judgment (3 October 2025) into the BCEA: four months for a single parent; four months plus ten days shared between two parents, neither taking more than four months; adoption leave for children up to six rather than two; four weeks’ notice and a written split where the parents work for different employers. UIF benefits would be aligned to the new entitlements.

Unlike everything else on this page, most of this already applies under the Court’s interim order. If your leave policy still says “four months maternity, ten days paternity”, it is out of date now, not when the Bill passes. The parental leave guide covers the current position.

Retrenchment procedure and the small-business carve-out

• Facilitation rules for large-scale retrenchments would be made by the CCMA rather than by ministerial regulation.
• After failed facilitation, unfair dismissal disputes could go directly to the Labour Court. The Constitutional Court has already held this for section 189A (below).
• One referral process for all retrenchment disputes, procedural challenges included.
• New small businesses, with fewer than 50 employees and under two years old, would not be bound by extended bargaining council agreements, subject to exclusions.

The section 189 process guide sets out the procedure as it stands today.

What the courts have already changed in 2026

These are law now, not proposals.

• NUMSA v Industrial Oleo Chemical Products[2026] ZACC 22 (29 May 2026). After a failed section 189A facilitation, employees can refer a substantive unfairness dispute straight to the Labour Court; conciliation is not a precondition. Large-scale retrenchments can reach court sooner.
• Maleka v Boyce N.O. [2026] ZACC 7 (24 February 2026). A manager who resigned after a change to his reporting line did not prove constructive dismissal: fear of future intolerability is not enough, and he had not used the internal grievance procedure. Informal complaints to a manager are not a substitute for a formal grievance, which is a good reason to have a written grievance procedure.
• Edgray Distributors v SACCAWU [2026] 7 BLLR 673 (LAC). In a large-scale retrenchment, employees may rely on procedural defects to argue that the dismissals were substantively unfair. Process is evidence.
• CSAAWU obo Qomoyi v CCMA [2026] 7 BLLR 659 (LAC). Whether language is racist is judged objectively and in context, and the sanction must match the employer’s own disciplinary code. A dismissal that went beyond the code was substantively unfair, with retrospective reinstatement.

The thread through all four: outcomes turn on the record. What the code says, what the grievance file shows, what happened in each consultation. That is also where every proposal in the Bills will be tested once they pass.

Every proposal is calculated from records you already have to keep.

Two weeks of severance per year needs the right start date. A probation carve-out needs the probation dates on file. On-call rules need three months of rosters and cancellations. In most businesses those sit in a contract drawer, a payroll export and a supervisor’s phone. Synthro keeps service history, contracts, leave and disciplinary records on one employee record, so the day the law changes is a settings change, not an archaeology project.

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