Weekend-Only Employment: Is It Legal and How Do We Handle Pay and Hiring?

Hi,

Can we recruit an employee to work only on Saturday and Sunday, i.e., 8 days a month? If yes, how do we appoint him and what are the salary rules? Also, is it legally valid?

Regards,
Vikram

Hello Vikram,

You can hire such kind of employees on a consultant basis. There are many who work on weekdays and look for an alternative mode of income on weekends. You can look for such kind and give them an offer of consultancy.

Regarding their pay, you can decide it according to the hours of work he/she is doing or the type of work one has to perform. They can be given a consultant appointment letter or a consultant agreement, i.e., an NDA while joining.

Please note there are no minimum wage laws for hiring a consultant.

If you work only on Saturday and Sunday, then who prevents you from employing people for these two days only? In such a scenario, five days will be off days, and only two days will be working days. You can proportion the salary accordingly.

However, things will be different if you remain open on all days and engage a separate set of people to work on Saturdays and Sundays. In this case, you will be violating the relevant provisions of observing one day in a week as a closed day of the state's Shops Act. If you are a factory running continuous shifts, this rule may not be applicable. Therefore, employing persons for two days a week in such a case is not a legal problem. The employment contract should also reflect this arrangement.

Dear colleague,

I am basing my comments on the following assumptions:

1. Your business activity requires workers to work only on Saturdays and Sundays.
2. Or, you already have a set of workers who work on a 5-day basis, and you need additional workers to work on Saturdays and Sundays.

In either case, you can employ workers on Saturdays and Sundays. You can engage them on a fixed-time worker basis for a certain period at a mutually agreed flat amount on a per day basis, depending upon skill level, experience, and the nature of the job.

Regards,
Vinayak Nagarkar
HR and Employee Relations Consultant

Their coverage under ESI, PF, etc., needs to be examined.