The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development announced adding Article 41 to the labor law recently, as the ministry, through this article, aims to stabilize the labor market in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as well as support enterprises and their workers. The decision restricted the use of the force majeure as a justification for dismissal, which is mentioned in paragraph 5 of Article 74 of the labor law, whereby the employer was obliged, before using it, to agree with the employee on three options which are matching the employee's wage with the actual work hours, granting the employee a local leave to be deducted from his/her deserved annual vacation, or granting him/her an unpaid exceptional leave for no more than 20 days per month. He added that this decision is restricted for six months following the start of announcing the precautionary measures by the country. The decision represents a maximum protection for the Saudis in a basic paragraph which does not allow the employer to terminate the contract once it became evident that the employer has benefited from any subsidy to deal with this situation, including SANED system. Therefore, the enterprise that benefited from SANED system are not allowed to terminate the Saudis according to the force majeure, and for the enterprise that did not benefit from SANED system, it is not allowed to terminate due to lack of the force majeure. The Labor Court deals with the cases of dismissal.
