How Long Do You Have to Refer a Dismissal to the CCMA? The 30-Day Rule Explained
If you have just been dismissed, one date matters more than any other. Not the date of your hearing. Not the day you were told the outcome. The date your right to challenge that dismissal at the CCMA runs out.
You have 30 days.
It is a short window, it is easy to miscount, and once it closes you cannot simply walk in and refer your case. You have to persuade a commissioner to let you in late first. Unfair dismissal made up 52% of the 188 619 disputes referred to the CCMA in the 2023/24 financial year, so this is not a rare problem or an unusual one.
This article covers how the 30 days work, how they are counted, when the clock starts, what an internal appeal does to it, and where you stand if the deadline has already gone.
The short answer: 30 days from dismissal, or from the appeal outcome
Section 191(1) of the Labour Relations Act says an employee who disputes the fairness of a dismissal must refer the dispute in writing to the CCMA, or to the bargaining council with jurisdiction over their sector, within 30 days of the date of dismissal. Or, if it is a later date, within 30 days of the employer making a final decision to dismiss or to uphold the dismissal.
That second sentence carries a lot of weight. More on it below.
Note the word refer. The deadline is for lodging the referral form. It is not a deadline for winning your case, gathering your evidence or making up your mind. All of that happens afterwards.
How are the 30 days counted?
People get caught out here, because the instinct is to count working days. That is wrong.
Days are calendar days. Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays all count towards your 30. The first day is excluded and the last day is included, so if you were dismissed on 1 March, day one is 2 March and day 30 is 31 March.
There is some relief if your last day lands on a weekend or a public holiday. Rule 3 of the CCMA Rules moves the deadline to the next working day in that situation, but the CCMA’s own website words the rule slightly differently to its published Rules information sheet.
Our advice is to ignore that relief entirely. Treat the earlier of the two possible dates as your real deadline. A rule you have to argue about is a poor thing to have standing between you and a hearing. If day 30 falls on a Saturday, refer on the Friday. Better still, refer in week two and leave yourself room to fix a mistake.
What counts as your date of dismissal?
Section 190 of the LRA sets this out, and the answer is not always the day you were handed the letter. As a general rule, the date of dismissal is the earlier of two dates: the date your contract of employment terminated, or the date you actually left the employer’s service.
Three common variations on that:
- If you were given notice, the date of dismissal is the date that notice expires, or the date you were paid all your outstanding salary if that comes first.
- If a fixed-term contract was not renewed, or was renewed on worse terms, the date is the day the employer offered those terms or told you it would not renew.
- If you were refused permission to return to work, the date is the day the employer first refused.
Where there is any doubt about which date applies to you, work from the earliest defensible one. Being early costs you nothing. Being three days out costs you a whole extra application.
Does an internal appeal extend the CCMA deadline?
Yes. This is the point most often reported incorrectly, including by sources that ought to know better.
The LRA allows employers to provide for an internal appeal against the initial decision to dismiss, either in their own disciplinary code or in a collective agreement with a registered union. The CCMA’s wording is plain: where an internal appeal procedure is followed, the employee has 30 days from the date of the appeal decision in which to refer the matter to the CCMA or the bargaining council with jurisdiction.
So: dismissed on 1 March, appealed internally, appeal outcome delivered on 20 March. Your 30 days run from 20 March.
Two cautions go with that.
It has to be a real appeal procedure. An informal email asking your manager to reconsider is a different thing from invoking an appeal that your employer’s disciplinary code actually provides for. Read the code, follow it properly, and keep proof of the date you lodged the appeal and the date the outcome reached you.
Appeals also drag. Employers do not always deliver outcomes promptly, and it is easy to lose track of where you stand while you wait. Diarise both dates, the dismissal and the appeal outcome, and keep written proof of each. If your appeal outcome still has not arrived weeks later, that is a reason to get advice, not a reason to keep waiting quietly.
What if you have already missed the 30 days?
You are not out of options, but the road is harder. You have to apply for condonation, which means asking the CCMA to excuse the late referral. The CCMA will not touch the merits of your dispute until the lateness has been considered and excused.
Condonation is granted on good cause shown. A commissioner weighs up how late the referral is, why it is late, your prospects of success on the merits, the prejudice to your employer, and any other factor that seems relevant.
Being honest about the odds: “I didn’t know about the deadline” is a weak explanation on its own. A short delay with a credible reason and a strong case underneath it puts you in a far better position than a long delay with a thin story. Condonation is never guaranteed, and the application eats time you could have spent building the case itself.
How the referral itself works
The referral for conciliation goes in on LRA Form 7.11, free from the CCMA’s website, from any CCMA office, or through the online platform at cmsonline.ccma.org.za. You complete and sign the form, serve a copy on your employer, then file it with the CCMA together with proof that you served it.
Proof of service is where referrals get stuck. A registered mail slip, a sent-email report, a copy signed and dated by the employer, or an affidavit confirming you served it will each do the job. If you use the CCMA’s online platform, a copy goes to the employer by email automatically, provided you enter the right address. If you earn below the BCEA earnings threshold, you can ask the CCMA to help you serve the documents.
Referring costs nothing. The CCMA charges no fee to lodge a dismissal dispute.
What happens after you refer
Your matter is set down for conciliation, an informal and confidential attempt to settle. The CCMA must give you at least 14 days’ notice of the date. If conciliation does not resolve it, a certificate is issued and the next clock starts: you generally have 90 days from the date of that certificate, or from the expiry of the 30-day conciliation period, to take the matter to arbitration or to the Labour Court, depending on which is the right forum for your type of dispute.
Section 192 of the LRA splits the burden of proof. You must establish that a dismissal happened. Once you have done that, your employer must prove the dismissal was fair, both that there was a fair reason for it and that a fair procedure was followed. That split is the single most useful thing a dismissed employee has going for them, and it is worth understanding properly before you walk in.
Where a dismissal is found unfair, the remedies include reinstatement, re-employment or compensation. Compensation must be just and equitable in the circumstances, capped at 12 months’ remuneration for an ordinary unfair dismissal and 24 months for an automatically unfair one. Those figures are ceilings. What gets awarded sits in the commissioner’s or the court’s discretion.
The deadline you can still do something about
Here is the uncomfortable part. Most of the damage to a dismissal case is done before the CCMA ever sees it, at the disciplinary hearing, where people arrive unprepared, say the wrong thing, and hand their employer the record it will lean on later.
If your hearing has not happened yet, that is the moment worth spending on. We have put together a free 7-point checklist to work through before your disciplinary hearing: the documents to request, the questions to ask, the mistakes people make on the day, and how the referral deadlines fit around all of it.
How Sentinel can help
Sentinel Labour Consulting is a labour consultancy, not a law firm. We do not represent clients at disciplinary hearings, at the CCMA, at bargaining councils or in the Labour Court. What we do is get you ready to handle it yourself.
For employees facing dismissal or already dismissed, that means working out your correct date of dismissal and your referral deadline, preparing your Form 7.11 and the documents that go with it, coaching you on how to put your version across, and giving you a frank read on where your case is weak before you spend months on it. The full scope is on our services for employees page.
Every employee deserves a fair process, and every employer deserves a defensible one. If your 30 days are running, do not spend them deciding.
Get the free 7-point checklist, book a consultation, or WhatsApp us on +27 72 262 6378.
This article is general information about South African labour law and the CCMA’s published procedures. It is not legal advice and does not create a consultant and client relationship. Time limits depend on the facts of your matter. Sources: CCMA info sheet Unfair Dismissal Disputes (CCMA-I849-2025-01); CCMA info sheet CCMA Rules, What the Public Needs to Know (CCMA-I808-2023-01); CCMA guidance on condonation; Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995, sections 185, 190, 191, 192 and 194.