Do you have to pay employees during power outages?
In one word, yes. The fact that your employees are unable to work during power outages is outside of their control and does not affect their employment contract. Nor can you expect employees to make up for lost time after hours. For that, you may have to pay them overtime.
You can however negotiate an agreement with your employees to change working hours to minimise the impact of load shedding on productivity. Any such changes would need the consent of your employees to be binding.
Otherwise, be creative and fill the load shedding down time with lunch hours, staff training and staff meetings.
For more information or any other labour law related queries, contact James Foxcroft.
