Short answer. Only for as long as the event lasts. Article 103 provides that where force majeure or circumstances beyond the employer's control prevent payment on time, the employer shall pay the wages immediately after such circumstances have ceased. The deadline is suspended, not the obligation.
What the law says
If on account of force majeure or circumstances beyond the employer’s control, payment of wages on or within the time herein provided cannot be made, the employer shall pay the wages immediately after such force majeure or circumstances have ceased.
Labor Code, Article 103 — Time Of Payment. Read the full provision →
What the provision gives, and what it takes back
The sentence reads: If on account of force majeure or circumstances beyond the employer’s control, payment of wages on or within the time herein provided cannot be made, the employer shall pay the wages immediately after such force majeure or circumstances have ceased. It is a narrow allowance with a duty attached to the end of it. The relief lasts exactly as long as the impossibility lasts, and the moment the obstacle is gone the payment is due — not on the next scheduled payday, and not when the accounting has caught up.
"Cannot be made" is the threshold
Note that the article speaks of payment that cannot be made, not payment that is inconvenient or awkward to make. That framing matters where only part of the operation is affected. A flooded branch does not necessarily prevent payment to staff who could be paid by another route, and a closed office does not by itself stop a transfer. The question the sentence poses is whether payment was genuinely impossible in the circumstances, and it is answered against what the employer could in fact still do.
Which circumstances are outside the employer's control
The qualifier is beyond the employer's control, and it is doing real work. A typhoon, a flood or a general disruption of banking are the sort of thing the phrase was written for. The difficulties employers more often invoke sit inside the business's own affairs: a client who has not settled an invoice, a cash-flow shortfall, a payroll officer on leave, a system migration that overran. Whether any given circumstance falls outside the employer's control is a question of fact, but ordinary business difficulty is a hard place to locate it.
If payday has passed
Fix the dates first, because everything turns on them: when the wage fell due, when the event began, when it ended, and when payment was actually made. Keep the announcements or advisories the employer issued, since these usually record its own account of what happened and when normal operations resumed. A gap between the event ceasing and the wage arriving is the point to raise, and it is much easier to raise from a short chronology than from a description of a difficult month.