Good day,

perhaps you can assist me. My problems exists due to my boss who wants to sell up and leave back for his home country Germany. He's blaming it on financial problems with the company but there are only two staff members running accounting services (me and one other) whose salary comes to under R30 k a month while his investor drawings for this year alone sit in the millions. Due to my position in the company, things shut down completely when I'm off and even when I get the odd bit of leave in December or when I'm sick, I have to take my laptop home and work from there.

He has given us notice and for the last eight years that I have worked for him I have not had a single day's leave where I did not have to check the bank accounts, forward him statements, answer phone calls from him and do almost all my duties except filing and actually being in the office. For these reasons I haven't been able to go away or anything like that.

Like I said earlier though, he has told us that in four months we're out of work and I'm due 64 days leave which I didn't take at all as I'm essential to business operations and he is insisting I take it in bits and pieces until he shuts down the company. I'm trying to insist that he pays me out for this. Can someone please advise me on this?

As a note: Section 21 of the labour act might apply as he has given us verbal notice, thus we can ask for a payout. He however refuses and wants to force me to take leave, which if I'm correct is unlawful.