SA Wages Pro

Public Holiday Pay: The Four Situations

5 min read — Updated September 2026

Four Situations, Four Different Amounts

Section 18 of the BCEA is the provision most often got wrong, because there is no single public holiday rate. What you owe depends on two things: did the worker work, and would that day ordinarily have been a working day for them?

  • Did not work, on a day they would ordinarily work - pay the ordinary day's wage
  • Worked, on a day they would ordinarily work - pay the GREATER of double the day's wage, or the day's wage plus what they earned for the hours actually worked
  • Worked, on a day they would NOT ordinarily work - pay the day's wage plus what they earned for the hours worked
  • Did not work, on a day they would NOT ordinarily work - nothing is due

The first line is the one people forget. A public holiday falling on a normal working day is a paid day off. You do not deduct it, and you do not need the worker to be there to owe it.

A Worked Example: The Short Public Holiday Shift

A worker earns R30.23 an hour on a 9-hour day, so an ordinary day's wage is R272.07. Freedom Day falls on a Monday, which is one of their normal working days. They come in for 2 hours to feed animals and go home.

Double the day's wage: R272.07 x 2 = R544.14.

The day's wage plus what they earned: R272.07 + (2 x R30.23) = R272.07 + R60.46 = R332.53.

Section 18 says pay the greater of the two, so the worker gets R544.14 - a full double day for 2 hours of work. That is the rule working as intended: they gave up their paid public holiday, so the day is paid at double regardless of how short the shift was.

Paying only the hours worked on a public holiday, or only double the hours worked, both come out far below what is owed. It is the DAY that is doubled, not the hours.

When It Is Not One of Their Working Days

If the public holiday falls on a day the worker would not ordinarily have worked - a Saturday for someone on a Monday-to-Friday week, say - and they come in anyway, the calculation is different: the day's wage plus what they earned for the hours worked.

Using the same figures, 2 hours on a non-ordinary day pays R272.07 + R60.46 = R332.53.

And if they do not work on a public holiday that was never one of their working days, nothing extra is due.

How SA Wages Pro Handles It

Mark the day type as a public holiday on the timesheet and record the hours worked, if any. SA Wages Pro applies the correct branch of section 18 and shows the result as its own line on the payslip, with the hours next to the amount.

Public holidays that fall on an ordinary working day and were not worked are picked up as well, so a paid day off is not quietly dropped.

South Africa has 12 public holidays a year, and where one falls on a Sunday the following Monday is the public holiday.

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