Two lines, not one category
Employers use “casual” to mean many things: a student on Saturdays, a relief cashier, a labourer hired by the day, someone on a zero-hours arrangement. The law uses none of those words. A person who works for you and is paid is an employee, unless they genuinely run a business of their own — see employee or independent contractor. What the law does instead is draw two lines through the hours worked.
The first line is 24 hours a month. Below it, several chapters of the BCEA and the UIF Acts switch off. The second is the hours of a comparable full-time employee. Below that, for lower earners at larger employers, section 198C of the LRA switches equal treatment on. A worker can be on either side of each line independently: a receptionist working 20 hours a week is over the first line and under the second; a once-a-month relief worker is under both.
Neither line changes the basics. The national minimum wage, the right not to be unfairly dismissed, the Employment Equity Act and the Occupational Health and Safety Act apply from the first hour.
Under 24 hours a month
The BCEA repeats the same exclusion at the head of three chapters. Chapter Two on working time is the first, and it keeps only section 7, the general duty to regulate working time with regard to health and safety:
This Chapter, except section 7, does not apply to— (a) senior managerial employees; (b) employees engaged as sales staff who travel to the premises of customers and who regulate their own hours of work; (c) employees who work less than 24 hours a month for an employer.
Section 19(1) says the same for Chapter Three (leave), and section 28(1) for Chapter Four (written particulars, records and payslips). So for an employee under 24 hours a month there is no statutory annual, sick or family responsibility leave, no statutory overtime or rest-period rule, and no duty to hand over the sixteen written particulars. The UIF Acts draw the same line, using the same number:
employed by that employer for less than 24 hours a month
Note — The subsection excludes from the Act an employee employed by that employer for less than 24 hours a month, and that employee’s employer; the Unemployment Insurance Act itself carries the same exclusion.
What does not switch off matters more than what does:
- The national minimum wage of R30,23 an hour applies to every worker with no hours threshold.
- The four-hour minimum in section 9A applies to every worker earning below the threshold, however few hours they work — see the pay section below.
- Unfair dismissal. The LRA has no hours carve-out. Ending the arrangement is a dismissal that must be fair.
- Notice and severance in Chapter Five carry no 24-hour exclusion in the text, so treat them as applying.
Written particulars are therefore not compulsory below the line, but they are strongly advisable. A one-page engagement letter recording the rate, the hours, when work will be offered and how it ends is what you will need the day the relationship turns into a dispute or the hours drift over 24.
Part-time: equal treatment under s 198C
Section 198C is the third of the non-standard employment regimes added to the LRA in 2015, alongside the rules on labour brokers and fixed terms. It defines a part-time employee by comparison, not by a number of hours:
a part-time employee is an employee who is remunerated wholly or partly by reference to the time that the employee works and who works less hours than a comparable full-time employee;
The comparator is a full-time employee of yours, on the same type of employment relationship, doing the same or similar work, in the same workplace if there is one. Like its sister sections, s 198C is gated by the threshold, the small-employer exclusion, the 24-hour line, and a three-month wait:
This section does not apply— (a) to employees earning in excess of the threshold determined by the Minister in terms of section 6(3) of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act; (b) to an employer that employs less than 10 employees or that employs less than 50 employees and whose business has been in operation for less than two years, unless— (i) the employer conducts more than one business; or (ii) the business was formed by the division or dissolution, for any reason, of an existing business; (c) to an employee who ordinarily works less than 24 hours a month for an employer; and (d) during an employee's first three months of continuous employment with an employer.
So the duty bites when the part-timer earns at or below R269 600,90 a year, you have 10 or more employees (or 50 or more in a business under 2 years old), they ordinarily work 24 hours or more a month, and they have been with you for three months. From then on:
Taking into account the working hours of a part-time employee, irrespective of when the part-time employee was employed, an employer must— (a) treat a part-time employee on the whole not less favourably than a comparable full-time employee doing the same or similar work, unless there is a justifiable reason for different treatment; and (b) provide a part-time employee with access to training and skills development on the whole not less favourable than the access applicable to a comparable full-time employee.
Treatment is measured on the whole, taking hours into account, so pro-rata pay and pro-rata leave are exactly what the section expects. What it forbids is a lower hourly rate, exclusion from a bonus scheme, medical aid or training, or being passed over for vacancies, simply because the person is part-time. A justifiable reason means the same thing here as in the fixed-term rules: seniority, experience, merit, or the quality or quantity of work. The section also requires the same access to apply for vacancies as full-timers have, and disputes go to the CCMA or a bargaining council.
A part-time contract, then, is an ordinary permanent employment contract with the ordinary hours and days of work recorded under item (e) of the written particulars, leave pro-rated by agreement, and, at a covered employer, terms that can be defended against the comparator.
Pay: the minimum wage and the four-hour rule
Whatever the hours and whatever the label, the wage floor is the national minimum wage of R30,23 an hour from 1 March 2026, and it cannot be signed away:
(5) Every employer must pay wages to its workers that is no less than the national minimum wage. (6) The payment of a national minimum wage cannot be waived and the national minimum wage takes precedence over any contrary provision in any contract, collective agreement, sectoral determination or law, except a law amending this Act.
Paying by the task, the piece or the shift rather than the hour is lawful, but it does not escape the floor:
if the worker is paid on a basis other than the number of hours worked, the worker may not be paid less than the national minimum wage for the ordinary hours of work.
Nor does output-based pay change the person’s status. The Supreme Court of Appeal’s definition of an employee turns on what is handed over — productive capacity, not a result:
Finally, the rule that catches short shifts. Section 9A of the BCEA requires that any employee or worker earning less than the threshold who works fewer than four hours on a day is paid for four hours. It applies to every below-threshold worker, including those under the 24-hour line, because it is tied to earnings, not to hours:
(1) An employee or a worker as defined in section 1 of the National Minimum Wage Act, 2018, who works for less than four hours on any day must be paid for four hours work on that day. (2) This section applies to employees or workers who earn less than the earnings threshold
Commission-only, piece-work and on-call arrangements have their own page — commission, piece-work, seasonal and on-call work — including the on-call rules proposed in the Labour Law Amendment Bill, which are not law.
Figures last reviewed 9 September 2026.
Frequently asked questions
No. South African law has no category called casual worker. A person who works for you and is paid is an employee (or, if they genuinely run their own business, a contractor). The only thing the word usually points to is the 24-hour line: an employee who works fewer than 24 hours a month for you is outside the BCEA chapters on working time, leave and particulars, and outside UIF. Everything else, including the minimum wage and unfair-dismissal protection, applies.
Yes, if they work 24 hours or more a month for you. The Unemployment Insurance Contributions Act excludes only employees employed for less than 24 hours a month with that employer. Someone who works one full day a week is over the line.
After three months, and if you have 10 or more employees (or 50 or more in a business under 2 years old), a part-time employee earning at or below the threshold must be treated on the whole not less favourably than a comparable full-time employee doing the same or similar work, taking their hours into account. Pro-rata benefits are fine; excluding part-timers from a benefit altogether needs a justifiable reason.
You can pay by output, but the National Minimum Wage Act says a worker paid on any basis other than hours may not receive less than the minimum wage for their ordinary hours of work. So the per-task rate must, over the hours actually worked, come to at least R30,23 an hour, and a worker below the threshold who is called in for under four hours must be paid for four.