If You Work Through a Labour Broker, Count Your Months

The three-month rule South African workers don’t know — and the companies that exploit it | Based on Section 198A of the Labour Relations Act | May 2026

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You got a job. Technically. You work every day. You have a workplace, a manager, a desk or a station or a uniform. You show up. You do the work. You go home.

But on paper, you do not work for the company you walk into every morning. You work for a labour broker — a staffing agency that placed you there. Your payslip has their name on it. Your contract is with them. And the company that actually runs your day-to-day life has made it very clear: if things change, they call the broker. Not you. You just stop getting sent.

This arrangement is called a Temporary Employment Service, or TES. Labour broking. It is legal, it is common, and for years it was used to keep workers in a permanent state of disposability — no unfair dismissal protection, no retrenchment package, no CCMA, just a phone call between two companies and a worker who suddenly has no job.

Here Is What They Don’t Want You to Know

The law changed.

Section 198A of the Labour Relations Act — which came into effect in 2015 and was confirmed by the Constitutional Court in the landmark Assign Services v NUMSA judgment — says this:

The three-month rule: If you have been working at the same client company through a labour broker for more than three months, and you earn below R261,748.45 per year, you are deemed to be an employee of that client company — on an indefinite basis — with the same rights as any direct hire.

Read that again.

After three months, the company you actually work for every day becomes your statutory employer. Not the broker. The company. They are responsible for your working conditions, your fair treatment, and your dismissal process. They cannot simply call the broker and ‘cancel your assignment’ as if you were a rented vehicle. Sending you home after three months is a dismissal — and it has to be treated as one, with all the legal obligations that come with it.

Your Rights After Three Months

Your right after 3 months	What it means in practice
You are deemed employed by the client company	The company you actually work at — not the labour broker — becomes your statutory employer under the LRA. They cannot treat you as a stranger to their business.
You cannot be dismissed without a fair process	The client must follow a proper disciplinary or retrenchment process to end your employment. ‘Call the broker and tell them not to send you back’ is no longer lawful — it is a dismissal, and it must be treated as one.
You are entitled to equal treatment	You may not be paid less than a directly employed person doing the same or similar work for the same client. Benefits, conditions, and pay must be comparable.
You can refer a dispute to the CCMA	If you are sent home unfairly after the three-month mark, you can refer an unfair dismissal dispute to the CCMA within 30 days — against the client, not just the broker.
You are employed on an indefinite basis	Unless you have a genuine fixed-term contract in writing, you are deemed to be a permanent employee of the client. The broker cannot simply ‘end your assignment’ as if you were a borrowed piece of equipment.

The Constitutional Court confirmed this: In Assign Services (Pty) Ltd v NUMSA [2018] ZACC 22, the Constitutional Court confirmed that after three months, the client becomes the sole employer for LRA purposes. The purpose, the court noted, was to ensure that deemed employees are fully integrated into the enterprise as employees of the client.

Now Here’s the Part That Should Make You Angry

Some companies know exactly what the law says.

And they have built their entire staffing model around avoiding it.

The practice is called rotation. A worker is placed at a company through a broker. Two months and three weeks in, they are ‘reassigned.’ A different worker comes in. That worker lasted two months and three weeks. Then another. And another. The work never stops. The company never loses a day of output. But no worker ever crosses the three-month threshold. No worker ever becomes a deemed employee. No worker ever gets the rights the law intended them to have.

The De Rebus legal journal — one of South Africa’s most respected legal publications — explicitly identified this practice in a 2025 analysis of TES law, describing how ‘the three-month trigger in Section 198A can be artificially reset by rotating TES staff, undermining the objective of securing stable employment rights.’

It is, to be clear, a deliberate strategy. It is not a coincidence. It is a company looking at the law, understanding what it requires, and engineering a system specifically designed to ensure its workers never qualify for it.

To be direct: Rotating workers specifically to prevent them from crossing the three-month threshold is a practice the law was designed to stop. Section 200B of the LRA prohibits employers from using TES arrangements to circumvent their obligations. If your employer is cycling staff on two-month and three-week rotations, they know exactly what they are doing — and it is worth knowing that you have grounds to challenge it.

What You Should Do Right Now

If you work through a labour broker, or have in the past, the first thing to do is simple.

Count your months.

How long have you been at this specific client? Not how long you have been registered with the broker — how long you have been working at this particular company, doing this particular work, for this particular employer? If the answer is more than three months, and you earn below R261,748.45 per year, the law says you are that company’s employee. Full stop.

If you are approaching three months: be aware that the date matters. Keep a record of exactly when you started at this client. If your assignment ends just before the three-month mark and resumes shortly after, that pattern is worth noting.

If you have passed three months and were sent home without a fair process: you may have grounds for an unfair dismissal dispute at the CCMA. The referral must be made within 30 days of the date you were sent home. The CCMA is free to use.

If you believe your employer is deliberately rotating workers: document it. Speak to other workers in the same situation. Contact a trade union or the Department of Employment and Labour at 0800 030 007. Section 200B exists specifically to prevent TES arrangements being used to circumvent the law.

The Bigger Picture

Labour broking is not inherently wrong. For genuinely short-term work — covering a leave period, a seasonal peak, a specific project — TES arrangements are a legitimate and useful tool. The law accommodates this. The three-month threshold exists precisely because it distinguishes between temporary work and ongoing work that happens to be dressed up in temporary clothing.

The problem is not the system. The problem is the companies that use the system as a cover for permanent workforce management, which get the productivity of permanent employees while engineering away every obligation that comes with them.

The law already has the answer. Three months. Full employee status. CCMA access. Retrenchment rights. Equal treatment.

The only thing standing between you and those rights is knowing the date you started.

Save this number: Department of Employment and Labour toll-free line: 0800 030 007. CCMA: 0861 16 1616. If you believe you have been unlawfully dismissed after crossing the three-month threshold, call the CCMA and ask to make a referral. It is free, and the 30-day deadline starts from the day you were sent home.