The Employment Services Amendment Bill, now before Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Employment and Labour, would keep unlawfully employed foreign workers, including domestic workers in private homes, entitled to claim minimum wage and other legal protections from their employer. It would also raise the fines for employing foreign nationals without following the rules, with penalties of up to R1 million or 10% of turnover for repeat offenders. Written comment on the bill closes on 6 November 2026.
The bill, numbered B16-2026, was introduced in May 2026 and amends the Employment Services Act of 2014. According to a Parliament media statement issued on 18 September on behalf of committee chairperson Boyce Maneli, the committee has invited citizens, civil society, business and organised labour to comment before formal deliberations begin.
What the bill actually says about unlawfully employed workers
The wage protection is in a new section 12D. In the text of the bill as published on the Parliamentary Monitoring Group site, an employee or worker employed in breach of the new chapter on foreign nationals “is entitled to enforce any claim” under any law, collective agreement or contract against the employer. A labour inspector can bring a claim on the worker’s behalf under the National Minimum Wage Act, and an inspector can do the same under the Basic Conditions of Employment Act. For workers covered by a bargaining council, a council agent can act.
This is not a brand-new rule. The bill’s own memorandum on its objects says the provision “is currently contained in section 8(4)” of the existing Act and is being moved into the new chapter. Its stated purpose is to stop employers from hiring foreign nationals on terms inferior to those in labour legislation and collective agreements.
The bill does not mention domestic workers by name. Households are caught because the bill defines an employer as a person who remunerates, or is liable to remunerate, an employee or worker. The memorandum also says the bill extends the Act to all “workers” as defined in the National Minimum Wage Act, which is the law that sets the hourly floor for domestic work.
That floor is currently R30.23 an hour for domestic workers, the same as the general rate, from 1 March 2026, according to a summary of the Department of Employment and Labour announcement that cites Government Notice R7083. Our guide to the R30.23 minimum wage sets out what employers must get right.
The new fines and employer duties
A new section 12A bars anyone from employing a foreign national unless that person is permitted to work under a visa issued in terms of the Immigration Act or the Refugees Act, or under other legislation or a binding international agreement. Employers must confirm that the person may do the specific work, keep copies of the visa and related documents, and offer terms no worse than those given to South African citizens. They must also satisfy themselves, in a prescribed way, that no one in the country other than a foreign national has the skills for the vacancy, and prepare a skills transfer plan unless the Minister exempts them.
The penalties are in a new subsection 2A of the existing enforcement section. On application by the Director-General, the Labour Court may fine an employer who breaches section 12A, the quota rule in section 12B(8) or the new section 12E, which bars work outside what a visa permits. The ceiling is R100 000 for an employer with no previous breach and R200 000 for one that failed to comply with the same provision in the previous three years. For an employer with two or more earlier failures, it is the greater of R1 million or 10% of the previous financial year’s turnover.
The court must weigh any economic benefit the employer gained from the breach. The existing cap for other listed provisions rises from R50 000 to R100 000. The fines are maximums set by the court, and the bill does not set them per worker, although EWN reported the first-offence fine as applying per undocumented worker. That detail is not in the bill text we read.
We reported the fines earlier in our report on the fines of up to R1m or 10% of turnover and in our piece on households facing fines for hiring illegal foreign domestic workers.
Quotas, refugees and what happens next
Section 12B lets the Minister set maximum quotas for foreign nationals by Government Gazette notice, after consulting the Employment Services Board. Quotas can apply to a sector, an occupational category, a region or the whole country. A draft notice must be published for at least 30 days of comment first. Small employers, defined as non-public-sector employers with fewer than 10 employees that meet certain conditions, must be excluded from any quota. An employer that wants to exceed a quota can apply for an exemption under a new section 49A.
The bill also changes the definition of foreign national so that people applying for, or granted, refugee status are treated like citizens and permanent residents for employment purposes. The department made that point in a statement we covered in our report on the refugee clarification.
Comments go by email to committee secretary Zolani Sakasa at employmentservicesbill@parliament.gov.za by 16:00 on 6 November 2026, and submitters should say whether they want to speak at the public hearings. The Parliament statement gives no hearing dates yet. If the bill passes, section 17 says it takes effect on a date the President fixes by proclamation. Labour law specialist Michael Bagraim told EWN he believes the bill is unconstitutional and will likely be challenged, and that the country lacks the capacity to enforce it. That is his opinion, not a finding by any court.
