The plight of private sector employees involved in labor disputes with their employers should be carefully investigated by the relevant authorities. These individuals and their families are deprived of an income for as long as the employee is suspended from work. Such a situation is the result of twisted and unfair methods adopted by employers in order to delay rulings by committees which are responsible for solving labor disputes. Through their agents and legal representatives, these employers manipulate the situation by making use of loopholes in the system and resorting to procrastination and stalling to delay action by the committees. This is a very destructive and unproductive behavior with the unfortunate employees finding themselves unable to feed themselves or their families, let alone raise the money needed to pay the legal expenses.
Cases have been delayed for months and sometimes for years while the documents are simply moved from one committee to another. Even with cases involving arbitrary firing from work — which the law mandates should be settled within 15 days — the ruling by the supreme labor committee handling such cases is often delayed for four or five months. The reason for this is that all lower committees refer the cases they receive from all over the Kingdom to the country’s single supreme body for action.
Finding themselves loaded with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cases, members of the supreme committee often resort to looking into cases not as one panel but individually with each member handling a specified number of cases. They race with time to complete the largest number of cases by a given time. Such action is in clear violation of the labor and workmen’s law which guarantees workmen’s rights. It is little wonder that decisions in some cases come as a complete surprise to the parties involved, making many believe they have been unjustly treated.
Labor disputes should be given top priority and treated as an emergency that cannot be delayed. In most countries of the world, these cases are settled within 45 days. In Egypt, for example, a workman cannot be fired unless a three-member panel issues a ruling to this effect. An employer may not stop the worker’s salary until after the labor committee has issued its final ruling. Our religion instructs and directs us to pay the workman as soon he finishes his work and to do so before his sweat has dried. Despite the clearness of the statement, employers continue to stall and obstruct action in disputes involving their staff. Surely it is time for the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs to intervene. The number of lower committee members should be increased an additional supreme labor committees be established in all major cities. This would help ease pressure on the Kingdom’s sole supreme committee which is based in Riyadh.
30 September 2002
