Employees who were not entitled to maternity leave before will now on be entitled to 10 days’ paid parental leave to be paid out of the Unemployment Insurance Fund. A TimesLIVE report notes that this follows the signing of the Labour Laws Amendment Bill into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday, as reported in Legalbrief Policy Watch yesterday.

In terms of the Act an employee who is a parent not covered by maternity leave will be entitled to 10 consecutive days’ parental leave when their child is born or when an adoption order is granted.

As reported previously in Legalbrief Policy Watch, it also enables the adoptive parents of a child of under two years old to take adoption leave of two months and two weeks consecutively. If there are two adoptive parents‚ one of them is entitled to adoption leave and the other employee is entitled to parental leave of 10 days.

The same provision is made for commissioning parents in a surrogate motherhood agreement. According to TimesLIVE, the originator of the Act, Henri Terblanche, welcomed the signing of the Bill into law. ‘Congratulations to (African Christian Democratic Party MP) Cheryllyn Dudley for all her hard work with the Labour Laws Amendment Bill that was signed into law on 23 November by President Ramaphosa,’ Terblanche said.

Terblanche said the law was progressive, gender neutral and would contribute to a more equitable society as it recognised the role of both parents in their care-giving duties towards their children.

Full TimesLIVE report