Legalities of not being paid

[Slippy]

Greetings

The company I work for is unfortunately going through a pretty bad patch at the moment. The owner decided a few months ago to start a new venture and changed the business model a bit - from supplier/wholesaler, to retail and advertising.
Turnover dropped drastically in the interim, and while the new venture is now in the process of launching, staff have not been paid for April as yet. At this point I don't see how the new venture is going to pull enough turnover to cover a double round of salary payments - in addition to other waiting bills (at the moment the priority for payments is to suppliers and other accounts essential to keeping the business running).

So let's look at worst case scenario - end of May comes and there's no money to pay staff for the second month running. What now? If staff begin resigning, are they still required to work in notice periods? Can the owner still make demands from staff as he would if they had been paid? If the business is bankrupt, do we get paid? Would this be a situation for the CCMA?

[Dave A]

Quite good coverage of the issue from a legal perspective in this non-payment of salaries thread. You might want to take careful note of the tidbit on constructive dismissal in there when it comes to your questions about moving on.