Tag: employment contract

Not everything you hear about tax is true. There are many myths and misconceptions about payroll tax in South Africa that simply won’t go away. Let’s look at a few of them and what the tax and labour laws actually say. No matter whether your employer calls what it pays you a salary, overtime or commission, it is taxed at the same rate on the payroll according to the standard PAYE tax tables.

An employer cannot unilaterally change an employee’s retirement age. Should the employer do so and terminate the employee’s employment, the dismissal may constitute an automatically unfair dismissal and amount to unfair discrimination.

The Labour Court in a recent judgment, Mthobisi Mthimkhulu v Standard Bank of South Africa (J928/20) (18 September 2020) considered whether an employee who has been found guilty of serious misconduct can avoid the ultimate sanction of dismissal by resigning before the employer imposes the sanction.

​​​​​​In a recent judgment, Gold One Limited v Madalani and Others (JR 1109/15) [2020] ZALCJHB 180 (9 September 2020), the Labour Court confirmed that intolerability is a high threshold in constructive dismissal matters. Intolerability is more than a working environment or working under employment conditions that are difficult, unpleasant or stressful.

An interview with Darren Olivier, Partner Adams & Adams, and Dr Ivor Blumenthal, CEO, ArkKonsult, discussing the legal implications of remote working with respect to an organisation's intellectual property.

This has been a year of disruption, confusion and now a new ‘normal’. COVID-19 is here for the foreseeable future, and that means humans need to adapt to new circumstances like Working from Home (WFH). Almost every industry has embraced this as an effective way of keeping staff safe, remaining operational and controlling costs during global economic downturn.

If one accepts that innovation is crucial to business sustainability especially in the disruption era in which we live, there appears to be a need to better explain the purpose of intellectual property and how these rights together with workplace policies on performance can assist businesses adapt and compete.

The pandemic brought with it a slew of realisations for business owners, one such an epiphany is how most organisations need fewer employees to remain functional. But using COVID-19 as a reason for retrenching a surplus of employees constitutes as unfair dismissal.

The Job Seekers Exemption Certificate (JSEC) idea has been around for a long time. It was first presented to President Thabo Mbeki, who passed it on to the Department of Labour. But nothing was done with it. It seems that it is only when you are unemployed that you can understand that it will be like holding a piece of gold in your hand.

Employment contracts always include a notice period should an individual decide to resign. Typically, South African workers must give a calendar months’ notice when they decide to part ways with their employer, but what happens in the case of resignation with immediate effect, especially when there are pending disciplinary actions?