The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia announced adding Article 41 to the Saudi Labor law recently, As the Ministry aims to stabilize the labor market as well as support the companies and their employees through this article.
The new decision restricted the use of force meajure as a justification for dismissal, As mentioned in Article 74 of the Saudi Laboar Law, whereby the employer was obliged, before using it, to agree with the worker on 3 option which are matching the employee's salary with the actual work hours, granting the employee a local leave to be deducted from his/her deserved annual vacation, or granting him an unpaid exceptional leave for no more than 20 days per month.
- This decision is restricted for 6 months following the start of announcing the precautionary measures by Saudi Arabia, The decision represents maximum protection to the Citizens in a basic paragraph, which does not allow the employer to terminate the contract once it became evident that the employer has benefited from the subsidy to deal with this situation including SANED system.
- Therefore, the companies that benefited from SANED system are not allowed to terminate the citizens as per the force meajure, and for the companies that did not benefit from SANED system, it is not permitted to terminate due to lack of the force measure, The labor court to deal with the cases of dismissal.
