Employment law
Meal allowances in Mali: pay or reimbursement, the question that changes everything
At Sahel Froid, a cold-storage warehouse in Bamako, the night shift loads trucks from 9 pm to 5 am. Nobody goes home for dinner. For years the company has paid each of those employees XOF 15,000 a month, labelled a "meal allowance", and the matter has seemed settled.
Sahel Froid is a fictitious company, as are the people named in this article: their names serve only as an example. The problem it runs into is not. The day one of those employees is dismissed after six years, the question finally arises: does that XOF 15,000 count towards the severance calculation? The answer does not depend on the label on the payslip.
1. What are we actually talking about?
A meal allowance is the sum paid to an employee who cannot take their meal in the usual way because of a service constraint: a night shift, an uninterrupted session, an extended working day.
It is not a reimbursement in the accounting sense, nor a salary in the ordinary sense. It is a hybrid, and that ambiguity is precisely what makes it worth handling properly: depending on its true nature, it does or does not count towards the calculation of end-of-contract payments.
2. Where is the rule? Not where you look for it
The Malian Labour Code does not mention meal allowances. It sets neither their amount, nor the conditions for granting them, nor their treatment. That silence is not an oversight.
The Code sets the principles and leaves collective agreements to detail supplementary pay. It requires collective agreements capable of extension to contain provisions on wages by occupational category, on the arrangements and rates for overtime, and on seniority bonuses and travel allowances (Labour Code, article L.79).
So the meal allowance lives in the branch collective agreement, in the establishment agreement, in the employment contract or in company custom. That is where, and nowhere else, its conditions must be read: qualifying working time, amount, whether it may be combined with other allowances.
A meal allowance has no statutory amount. It has an agreed amount, or it has none.
The most common error: reusing an amount read elsewhere
The amounts in circulation (a multiple of the category's minimum hourly wage, an uplift expressed as a percentage) come from specific collectively agreed texts. They vary from branch to branch and may have changed. Applying them without having found them in the agreement that governs your company means risking years of overpaying, or of underpaying.
3. The question that decides everything: pay or reimbursement?
The Code says nothing about meal allowances, but it settles their central question, in a formula that appears at two strategic points.
| The article | What it says | The consequence |
|---|---|---|
| L.100 | Commissions, bonuses and miscellaneous benefits, or the allowances representing them, count towards notice pay and damages "to the extent that they do not constitute a reimbursement of expenses" | A bonus counts towards the base; a reimbursement does not |
| L.53 | The remuneration used to calculate severance covers all payments that are consideration for work, "excluding those in the nature of a reimbursement of expenses" | The same dividing line, for severance |
The rule is therefore single, and simply put (Labour Code, article L.53).
What pays for work counts towards the base. What reimburses an expense does not.
What remains is to decide which side a given sum falls on. The test is one question: if the constraint disappeared, would the sum still be paid? If yes, it is not a reimbursement of expenses, whatever the payslip calls it.
| The true nature of the sum | Does it count towards the calculation base? |
|---|---|
| Reimbursement of a meal actually taken, in return for a service constraint | No: it is in the nature of a reimbursement of expenses |
| A flat sum paid to everyone, regardless of any expense incurred | Yes: it pays for work, so it counts |
| A sum whose amount plainly exceeds the cost of a meal | The excess portion is analysed as supplementary pay |
At Sahel Froid the XOF 15,000 is paid every month, at the same amount, including months when the night shift was cut to three posts. The constraint varied, the sum did not: it pays for work.
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4. What the characterisation costs, in figures
Example. A Sahel Froid storekeeper receives XOF 150,000 in basic pay and XOF 15,000 in meal allowance each month. He is dismissed after six years of service. He is paid monthly, so his notice period is one month (Labour Code, article L.41).
Severance is calculated on the average monthly remuneration of the last twelve months, to which 20% is applied for each of the first five years and 25% for the sixth, 125% in total.
| The item | If the allowance is a reimbursement of expenses | If the allowance is supplementary pay |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly base used | XOF 150,000 | XOF 165,000 |
| Severance (125%) | 150,000 × 1.25 = XOF 187,500 | 165,000 × 1.25 = XOF 206,250 |
| Payment in lieu of notice (1 month) | XOF 150,000 | XOF 165,000 |
| Total | XOF 337,500 | XOF 371,250 |
The gap is XOF 33,750 for a single employee, on a single departure. Across the twelve employees of the night shift, it becomes an exposure of more than XOF 400,000 that nobody has provisioned for.
And it does not stop there: the payment due for failure to observe notice equals the remuneration and benefits of every kind the worker would have received during the notice period that was not observed (Labour Code, article L.42). The wording is broad, and it works in the same direction.
5. A closer look: a travel allowance is not a meal allowance
Discussions often turn up a precise scale: three times the hourly guaranteed minimum wage for one main meal taken away from the place of work, six times for two meals, nine times for two meals and overnight accommodation. That scale does exist. It is in Decree No. 96-178/P-RM of 13 June 1996, article D.86-13.
But the chapter heading matters: "General conditions of employment and pay for domestic staff", made under article L.86 of the Labour Code. It applies to staff employed at the employer's private home for family and household tasks (Decree No. 96-178/P-RM, article D.86-1).
So the scale governs neither the Sahel Froid warehouse, nor a factory, nor a construction site. And it addresses something else: an occasional trip away from the usual place of work, not a meal taken at work because of a shifted schedule.
Travel leaves the workplace. The meal allowance stays in it. They are not the same sums.
6. Do not confuse it with the night-work uplift
The meal and the time are two distinct things, and a night worker is entitled to both.
Night work is work performed between nine in the evening and five in the morning (Labour Code, article L.141). That characterisation does not in itself create an uplift: it is exceeding the statutory working time that triggers one.
Absent a collective or company agreement, every hour worked beyond statutory working time carries an uplift of 10% from the 41st to the 48th hour by day, 25% beyond the 48th hour by day, 50% where it falls at night on a working day, and 50% by day and 100% at night on a non-working day (Labour Code, article L.137).
A company that pays a meal allowance believing it has dealt with night hours has dealt with nothing at all. See Overtime.
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7. Making the payment safe, in four steps
- Identify the text that creates the allowance: collective agreement, establishment agreement, contract or custom. Without a text there is no entitlement, and if a custom has taken hold, it produces effects you will have to live with.
- Check the triggering event and write it down: night working time, uninterrupted session, extended hours. An allowance with no defined trigger drifts mechanically towards being characterised as supplementary pay.
- Show the allowance separately on the payslip, which must carry gross remuneration with all its components: basic pay, bonuses, allowances, overtime, benefits in kind (Labour Code, article L.105).
- Treat every employee in the same situation the same way. Every employer must ensure equal pay for the same work or work of equal value, remuneration meaning all benefits paid directly or indirectly, in cash or in kind (Labour Code, article L.95).
Other constraint-related allowances follow the same reasoning
Disturbance, unsanitary work, arduousness, clothing wear where the company provides no uniform: every such allowance is read in two steps. Where does it come from? An agreement, a contract or a custom, never the Code alone. What does it compensate? An expense incurred, or a constraint endured. The first is a reimbursement, the second is remuneration.
Only one allowance is set directly by the Code: the seniority bonus, due after three years of continuous service with the same company, calculated as a percentage of the minimum wage of the employee's grading category: 3% after three years, 5% after five years, then 1% per additional year up to a ceiling of 15%, unless more favourable provisions apply (Labour Code, article L.97).
Key takeaways in 6 points
- Look for the meal allowance in the collective agreement, the establishment agreement, the contract or custom: it is not in the Labour Code.
- Never reuse an amount read elsewhere without finding it in the agreement that applies to your company.
- Apply the test: if the constraint disappeared, would the sum still be paid? If yes, it pays for work and counts towards the base.
- Recalculate the company's exposure: the gap affects both severance and payment in lieu of notice.
- Do not transpose the travel scale from the implementing decree: it applies to domestic staff.
- Pay the meal allowance and the night-hours uplift separately: one compensates a meal, the other pays for time.