Why do I have to take leave in order to be paid by the UIF Relief Fund?

The long answer

If an employer cannot afford to pay salaries during the lockdown, he can apply to the UIF’s Covid-19 Temporary Employee/Employer Relief Scheme (TERS). In a directive published on April 8, Labour Minister Thulas Nxesi urged employers to calculate the TERS benefits staff would receive from the UIF and pay this amount to staff, and then off-set the amount paid by UIF against the salaries paid once they received payment from the UIF.

It’s important to note that even though the Labour Department has asked employers not to force employees to take their annual leave, but preferably to assist them to survive the lockdown through applying for the UIF Covid-19 Temporary Employee/Employer Relief Scheme (TERS) for them, your employer can require you to take annual leave at a time it suits him, in terms of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act.

Johan Botes of Baker McKenzie says that employees who are put on annual leave during the lockdown must be credited with the annual leave days taken during the lockdown, as the employer can off-set the amount received from the UIF TERS fund against the salaries paid.

The TERS fund does not pay your full salary, but only a portion of it (from 38% for the highest salary which is capped at R17,712, to 60% for the lowest salary. It works out at R3 500 per month for the lowest salary to R6 730 for the highest.)

Botes says the employer must credit staff for the annual leave taken “with the proportionate entitlement to paid annual leave in future”. So you should still be entitled to take some proportion of the annual leave you have already taken, later.

You say that your employer initially told you that you could cash in your annual leave when you needed it, but that is illegal. The employer can only pay out annual leave in cash when you are no longer employed.