Article 77 of the Labor Law has been a hot topic of discussion on social media websites as well as in the opinion pages of Saudi newspapers. The issue has now reached the Shoura Council with many demanding that the consultative body make amendments to the controversial article. According to a report in Okaz newspaper, Muhammad Al-Muhanna, spokesman of the Shoura Council, said that the Council has set up a new committee comprising chairmen and members of its three subcommittees to discuss and study the handicaps of the article as well as solutions proposed by citizens. "The meeting of the Shoura Council president and heads of its three committees with citizens has been instrumental in bringing to light the major problems and difficulties being faced by them because of this article," he said. Article 77 states that the aggrieved party is entitled to the following compensation in the event of his termination from service for an invalid or illegal reason provided that the amount of compensation is not mention in the labor contract. 1. In the case of a fixed-term contract, whoever terminates the contract (either employer or employee) for invalid reasons is required to compensate the other party with the wages of the remaining period of the contract. 2. In the case of termination due to invalid reasons in an indefinite contract, the aggrieved party is entitled to 15 days wages for each year of service. In both cases, the sum to be paid to the aggrieved party cannot be less than two months' salary. Al-Muhanna said that an amendment to Article 77 is within the jurisdiction of the Shoura committee for social, youth and family affairs. However, members of some other committees also wanted to be involved in making necessary amendments to the article, and this necessitated the formation of a special committee to examine as many as 8,000 proposals and complaints that came before the Council. He said that the Council will meet some businessmen and owners of private companies to discuss the issue and take into account the opinions of all parties concerned, including businessmen, employees, experts and the aggrieved parties so as to reach a sound and judicious decision. There is no doubt that the Shoura Council's move to create a committee to study the text of the Labor Law article is the right step. Similarly, the objective criticism made by some columnists has also been sound and logical. Hopefully, this will lead to the amendment of Article 77 and to the end of the confusion caused by it. Lawmakers have to safeguard the rights of all parties within the purview of this article. It is worth pointing out that generally businessmen and owners of companies do not want employees or workers who are unproductive or lazy or who are not serious in doing their work. Hence, they want to get rid of these workers by giving them the compensation mentioned in the said article. Perhaps the outrage at the implementation of Article 77 can be attributed to the arbitrary acts of some companies that resulted in the mass sacking of their employees. This article or any other articles of the Labor Law may not be the real reason for the mass sacking. It could, for example, have been caused by some other factors such as a slowdown in the performance of the companies as a result of austerity measures taken by the state because of the fall in oil prices, which led to the hike in prices of electricity, water and fuel. This would have led to a decline in the demand for the corporate services being offered by these companies and subsequently they may have decided to dispense with some employees whom they had "hired" following the implementation of the Nitaqat Saudization program. This phenomenon known as fake Saudization involves hiring Saudis for the record, but not having these employees actually working in the firms. Some companies resort to such ploys in order not to be classified in red category of Nitaqat. The thing that caught my attention in the uproar that accompanied the criticism of Article 77 was that the sacking of Saudi employees by some companies has been linked to the issue of expatriates. There is general talk that these companies sacked some Saudis and appointed expatriates in their place. For example, in a statement a Shoura Council member expressed surprise at the fact that 50,000 Saudis were sacked at the same time that 172,000 expatriates were recruited. However, there may not be any expatriates working in the companies that sacked Saudi staff. Also, there may not be any among the sacked Saudis who have the ability or willingness to do the work for which expatriates were hired. Of course, there are not sufficient numbers of Saudis working as doctors and engineers or in other professions in which Saudis are not ready to work. Dr. Ali Al-Ghamdi is a former Saudi diplomat who specializes in Southeast Asian affairs. He can be reached at [email protected]
