What the Law Says About the Weekly Off, and When It Is Paid

A weekly off is a day each week a worker must not be made to work. Unless the government exempts the work, the OSH Code, 2020 caps the week at six days, so at least one day in seven is off.

Which day is off, and whether it is paid, depend on the rules covering you. The day is the easy part. The pay is what trips people up, because a monthly salary sometimes already includes the weekly off.

This page covers the six-day limit and whose rules apply to you. Then which day is off, when it is paid, what happens when someone works it, and when it can be skipped.

What Weekly Off Means in Law

The law names no particular weekday. The day off is what is left when the law caps how many days anyone may work.

That cap sits in section 26(1) of the OSH Code: no worker may be allowed to work more than six days in any one week. The Code calls the day off a weekly holiday. The four labour codes took effect on 21 November 2025, rationalising 29 older labour laws.

A textile mill in Surat running six-day weeks sits inside the cap. A seventh working day in the same week is outside it, unless the government has exempted that work.

Notice what the section does not say. It names no day of the week, and it says nothing about pay. Both come from wage rules, and which wage rules depends on who your business answers to.

So the six-day cap, the night-shift rest and the compensatory holidays sit in the Code and hold for every worker. The day, the swap and the ten-day limit depend on whose rules you follow, which is the next thing to settle.

Which Rules Apply to Your Business?

For most businesses, the state’s. The Code on Wages, in section 13, lets the government provide for a weekly rest day and decide how it is paid. So the detail sits in rules, and those rules come from two places.

Which set you read depends on your industry, not on your size. The law names a short list of establishments where the Central Government is the authority. Everyone else answers to their state.

These read the central wage rules, notified on 8 May 2026:

• Railways, mines, oil fields and major ports
• Air transport, telecom, banking and insurance
• Central public sector undertakings, and contractors working for them

These read their own state’s rules:

• Factories, fabrication units and textile mills
• Shops, showrooms and supermarkets
• Hotels, restaurants, banquet halls and cloud kitchens
• Clinics, diagnostic labs and hospitals
• Schools, colleges and coaching centres
• Salons, spas, gyms and construction sites

Most businesses sit in the second list. For them the state government makes the rules, and the day, the pay and the swap can differ from the central version.

Most sections below describe the central version, and say so. Where a rule sits in the Code itself, the post says that instead. If you follow state rules, check each central point against yours. Our wage rules post covers who the central rules reach.

Which Day Is the Weekly Off?

Under rule 6 of the central wage rules of 8 May 2026, Sunday by default, and any other day the employer chooses. In a six-day week the rest day is ordinarily a Sunday, and the employer may fix any other day for any employee or group.

Under the same rules, in a five-day week both days off are paid rest days, and they include Saturday and Sunday unless the employer fixes others.

Two further rules apply. First, staff must be told the rest day, and any change to it, before the change takes effect. A notice at a visible spot at work does it, or an electronic one, and the day belongs in your leave policy format as well.

Second, the rest day has to be earned. It is due once someone has worked their full working week in a row for the same employer. That is six days in a six-day week, or the set number in a shorter one.

Leave, holidays and lay-off days inside that working week still count toward the entitlement.

A telecom company’s customer care centre in Bengaluru, open all seven days, falls under the central rules. It staggers rest days across the week, and posts the roster before any change takes effect.

Is the Weekly Off Paid?

Under the central rules, yes, though not always as a separate line. The basic rule pays a rest day at the rate for the previous working day. A daily-rated worker off on Sunday is paid for it at Saturday’s rate, once they have worked the full week in a row.

Rule 6(4) then sets out one exception. In a six-day week, where the daily rate is the monthly wage divided by 26, and that rate is not below the minimum wage, no separate rest-day wage is payable.

The reason is in the arithmetic. The monthly wage pays for the whole month, rest days included, while the daily rate is set on the 26 working days. So the offs are already paid inside the monthly wage, and paying them again would pay them twice.

Take a worker on ₹26,000 a month in a six-day week, so the daily rate is that figure divided by 26.

A six-day week, ₹26,000 a month	What is paid
The daily rate	₹26,000 divided by 26 is ₹1,000
An ordinary weekly off	Nothing extra. It is inside the ₹26,000
A weekly off worked, with a swap day	The day worked is paid at the overtime rate, so at least ₹2,000. Nothing extra for the swap day

The exception names the 26-day divisor. It does not address a payroll that divides by 30, so check that case against your rules before assuming either way. Our salary per day calculator shows the daily rate both ways.

What If Staff Work on a Weekly Off?

Under rule 6(2) of the central rules, working a rest day needs a swap. No one may be required, or allowed, to work their rest day without one. The substituted day falls on a working day in the week just before or just after.

Two things then follow on pay. The day actually worked is paid at the overtime rate, which the compliance handbook for employers puts at no less than twice the normal wage. The swap day is paid as an ordinary day.

Where the central rules’ 26-day divisor applies, the swap day carries no extra pay, because the monthly wage already covers it. The overtime payment attaches to the day actually worked.

The Ten-Day Limit

The central rules put a ceiling on every swap. No substitution may leave an employee working more than ten days in a row without a rest day.

Festive weeks are where rosters break this rule. A bank’s cash-processing centre in Chennai, working through a festive rush, is the usual place it happens.

Take a worker who rests on Sunday, works Monday to Saturday, then also works the next Sunday. Moving that Sunday’s rest to the following Saturday makes twelve working days in a row. The swap has to fall early in the next week, not at the end of it.

Night Shifts and the 24-Hour Rule

The night-shift rule is in the OSH Code itself, so it binds everyone. Where a shift runs past midnight, section 28 makes the weekly off a period of 24 hours in a row, counted from the moment the shift ends.

So a nurse at a hospital in Pune finishing at 7 a.m. on Saturday is off until 7 a.m. on Sunday. Rostering her back for Saturday night’s shift cuts the weekly off short.

When a Weekly Off Can Be Skipped

Without a swap, only under an exemption. The OSH Code lets the government exempt workers from the six-day cap by notification.

Where an exemption costs a worker their weekly offs, section 26(3) gives back compensatory holidays of the same number. They must fall in the month the offs were due, or in the two months straight after.

Offices usually call both this and the swap a comp-off. The difference that matters is the deadline. The central rules’ swap sits in the week before or after. This one can run to the end of the second month after.

A compensatory holiday still shows on the attendance register like any other day off, in the prescribed muster roll format.

Section 26 carries a separate exception for road transport, with its own ten-day ceiling, distinct from the swap limit in the central rules.

Where that exception applies, a courier fleet in Delhi may call a driver in on a weekly off. It may not stretch that driver past ten days in a row without a whole day off.

Your Weekly Off Checklist

The weekly off is simple in principle and easy to get wrong in the roster, which is where it actually lives.

If I had to pick where to start, it would be the first item below. Every other line depends on whose rules you are under, and guessing that wrong makes the rest of the list wrong too.

1. Confirm whether the central rules or your state’s rules cover you, before relying on any central detail on this page.
2. Fix the weekly off for each person or group, and tell staff before any change, as the central rules require.
3. Check how your monthly wage becomes a daily rate. Under the central rules, a 26-day divisor in a six-day week already pays the weekly off, if the rate is not below the minimum wage.
4. Where the central rules apply, give a swap day in the week before or after whenever someone works their rest day, and pay the day worked at the overtime rate.
5. Count consecutive working days on every roster, so that no swap breaks the ten-day limit where it applies.

Do those five and the weekly off stops being a monthly argument. The working days calculator helps you check how many working days the month actually required before you run payroll.

Frequently Asked Questions