Executive Regulation of the Labour Law and its Annexes

Purpose and scope

• Details the Labour Law on contracts, probation, wages, working hours, leave, safety, the employment of women and juveniles, and penalties, and attaches the unified model of internal work rules.

Key rules, rights and obligations

• An employer may not keep a non-Saudi worker's passport, residence permit or medical insurance card (Regulation Article 6).
• A non-Saudi's contract is fixed-term however long it lasts or is renewed, and never becomes indefinite even if the parties agree (Regulation Article 12).
• Probation must be stated in the contract and may not exceed 180 days; it may be split into consecutive periods, and Eid holidays, National Day, Founding Day and sick leave do not count (Regulation Article 19).
• Overtime may not exceed 720 hours a year without the worker's consent (Regulation Article 22), and with consent may be compensated by leave of at least one and a half hours per hour, up to 30 days a year (Regulation Article 22 bis).
• Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha are four days each, National Day and Founding Day one day each, and a worker is compensated if they fall on the weekly rest day (Regulation Article 24).
• A working mother gets paid nursing breaks of up to one hour a day for twenty-four months after birth (Regulation Article 31).

Violations, penalties and common problems

• Sick leave during annual leave suspends the annual leave until it ends (Regulation Article 26), and unpaid leave over twenty days suspends the contract's effects (Regulation Article 25).
• A contract term allowing transfer anywhere in the Kingdom counts as the worker's written consent to transfer (Regulation Article 20).
• A violator must remove the violation within ten working days of the penalty, otherwise it counts as a repeat and the penalty doubles (Regulation Article 39).
• Common problems: a contract not registered on the platform or different from reality, late wages outside the Wage Protection System, and penalties without investigation or outside approved work rules.

Procedures and key deadlines

• Fines must be paid within sixty days of notice, otherwise ministry services are suspended; a challenge before the administrative court does not stop payment unless that court orders it (Regulation Article 40).
• Where an establishment is not covered by occupational hazards insurance, the employer reports a work injury to the labour office within a week of learning of it (Regulation Article 28).
• Employers should adopt and publish approved work rules, and workers should check their registered contract, which is the reference in any dispute.

An advisory summary prepared by Al-Bayan Al-Wadih Law Firm. It is not an official text and does not replace the law, its implementing regulations, or advice from a specialised lawyer. The official published text and its amendments prevail.