The default contract type under the DRC Labour Code, running indefinitely until lawfully terminated with notice and a valid, non-abusive reason.
Fixed-term contracts may not exceed 2 years (1 year for a worker separated from their family) and are generally renewable only once before being deemed indefinite.
The legal limit is 45 hours per week (max 9/day); overtime is paid at +30% for the first 6 overtime hours per week, +60% beyond, and +100% on the weekly rest day.
Probation must be agreed in writing and may not exceed 1 month for unskilled workers or 6 months for all other workers; any excess converts to a confirmed contract.
No statutory 13th-month salary; year-end or Christmas bonuses are paid only by custom, contract, or collective agreement.
No general statutory job-title regulation, but sectoral collective agreements and the national job classification set wage categories that affect pay scales and notice for certain staff.
Employers pay 13% to the CNSS (pension 5%, occupational risk 1.5%, family allowances 6.5%) plus an INPP training levy of 1%-3% by headcount (3% up to 50 employees) and 0.2% to ONEM — roughly 14.2%-16.2% total.
Employees contribute 5% of capped remuneration to the CNSS pension branch; employers also withhold IPR professional income tax at progressive rates of 3%-40% (total IPR capped at 30% of taxable pay).
In addition to statutory leave, employees are entitled to the following statutory benefits:
Employers must register staff with the CNSS and remit contributions to three social security branches plus two employer-only levies (Decree n°18/041 of 2018):
Work accidents and occupational diseases are covered by the CNSS occupational risk branch, funded entirely by the employer's 1.5% contribution. It provides medical care, daily allowances, and disability or survivor pensions; employers must declare workplace accidents to the CNSS within the prescribed deadlines.
The DRC Labour Code does not impose a general severance indemnity for indefinite contracts: lawful dismissal requires written notice of 14 working days plus 7 working days per full year of continuous service (or payment in lieu), together with a final settlement of accrued wages and untaken leave. Dismissal without a valid reason exposes the employer to court-awarded damages of up to 36 months' final salary, and terminating a fixed-term contract early without serious misconduct triggers damages broadly equal to the wages for the remaining term.
There is no statutory 13th-month salary in the DRC. Some employers pay a year-end or Christmas bonus by custom or under sectoral collective agreements, but any such payment is contractual rather than a Labour Code requirement.
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Your employee's hours, time off, holidays, bonuses, and commissions are automatically calculated into payroll. RemoFirst will invoice you in either US Dollars (USD), Euros (EUR), British Pounds (GBP), Canadian Dollars (CAD), Australian Dollars (AUD), or Singapore Dollars (SGD) around the 15th of each month to make sure your employees are paid on time. To make it even easier, you can summarize your entire global team's salaries to aggregate them into one payment (instead of many individual payments).
Unlike full-time employees, contractors work on projects with multiple companies at a given time and are technically self-employed. Full-time employees are solely focused on their employer and usually receive benefits (such as health insurance, equity or stock options, and time off) as an additional form of compensation. While it can be cheaper to work with international contractors instead of paying benefits to a full-time employee, you run the risk of misclassification. It's recommended to work with an EOR for contractor onboarding and payments, so you can know that your international contractors are paid compliantly and on time.
Whenever the employee or employer has a question about, or anything else related to international employment, they can speak with our customer support team to get answers from our team of experts.
