Definition of a collective grievance
A collective grievance (التظلم الجماعي), also called a group grievance, is a grievance lodged by more than one employee about a single shared cause that affects all of them in the same capacity: a decision, a policy or an existing working condition. Like an individual employee grievance, it is lodged through the internal route the establishment has declared.
What makes a collective grievance collective: one cause, not the number of employees
Five grievances that arrive in the same week about five different causes are not a collective grievance. They are five individual cases whose timing happened to coincide. A grievance is collective when the subject of the complaint is one and the same, so that the reply to it is, by its nature, a reply to everyone who lodged it.
The distinction is practical, not a matter of wording. A matter with one cause is not dealt with five times through five separate replies, because five different replies to one cause are themselves a new issue, added to the original one.
Why a collective grievance is handled as one case
When grievances recur in one department, around a particular policy or within a defined period, the pattern points to a structural cause rather than to individuals. A collective grievance is that signal arriving all at once, instead of being inferred later by counting separate cases. How grievances work as a signal of fairness in decisions is also examined under procedural justice.
Handling a collective grievance as a set of scattered cases hides what it is signalling. Each file closed on its own ends one case and leaves the cause in place, and the same cause then returns months later under other names.
What a collective grievance route adds to the individual route
Everything a sound grievance route rests on still applies: a declared channel; an alternative route for a grievance about the line manager; a known period for the reply; confidentiality within its declared limits; and a stated commitment that lodging a grievance in good faith will not be used as a reason for action against the person who lodged it. A collective grievance adds the following to them:
- Who represents the group in correspondence and in meetings, how that person was chosen, and the limits of what they may say on the group’s behalf.
- A single file that brings together the employees who lodged the grievance and the shared cause, instead of parallel files in which none can see the others.
- A single written reply delivered to each of those employees by name. A reply that reaches only the representative leaves everyone else without an outcome on which to act.
- Separation between the person who examines the grievance and the person who issued the decision complained of. It is the same kind of separation an internal investigation draws between the person who receives a report, the person who investigates it and the person who decides.
An establishment that never receives a collective grievance is not necessarily free of problems. The route may be unknown to employees, or they may not feel safe using it. Coming forward as a group calls for more confidence than coming forward individually, not less.
The internal collective grievance route is not the first stage of the statutory route
Treating the internal route as the first stage of the statutory route is the confusion that costs something. An internal grievance route is an arrangement the establishment sets up for itself to resolve what can be resolved within it, and its place is the employee handbook. It is a different thing from the statutory route, and it should not be taken as that route’s first step.
One practical consequence of that difference can be overlooked: an establishment’s handling of an internal grievance does not stop a statutory period from running and does not extend it. The periods for the statutory route and for Article 72 of the Labor Law run to their dates whether or not an internal route exists. An employee who assumes that waiting for the internal reply preserves their time may reach the end of the internal route and find that the other period has already expired.
The statutory route for a worker claiming their rights begins with amicable settlement (التسوية الودية) at the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development. According to the Ministry’s service page, the complaint is filed electronically through the Ministry’s electronic labour services portal (بوابة الخدمات الإلكترونية للعمل) to the settlement office in the city of the last working day. The two parties are given one week for direct negotiation, and settlement sessions are then held. The statutory duration is 21 working days from the filing of the request, and where no settlement is reached the matter is referred to the labour court. The service is free of charge. Both stages, and the deadline that governs them, are explained in our guide to amicable settlement and the labour court.
The route the service page describes is the worker’s route in an individual capacity. The page mentions no form for filing a complaint on behalf of a group in a single request, and no standing for a person who represents the group before the Ministry. So the route described applies to each employee who lodged the collective grievance as their own route, and a shared cause inside the establishment does not, of itself, create a collective standing outside it.
The same page states that the request is to be filed within twelve months, which is consistent with Article 234 of the Labor Law. Under Article 234 of the Labor Law, no claim relating to a right provided for in the Labor Law, or arising from the employment contract, is admissible before the labour courts after twelve months have elapsed from the date the employment relationship ended, unless the claimant offers an excuse the court accepts or the defendant acknowledges the right. The period is therefore counted from the end of the relationship, not from the date the right arose, and both exceptions are set out in the text of the article itself.
The periods in Article 72 of the Labor Law are not the collective grievance route
The periods that may come to mind when a grievance is mentioned are set by Article 72 of the Labor Law, and they apply specifically to a grievance against a decision imposing a disciplinary penalty. How they work for one such penalty is set out under suspension. They are three periods for three different steps, not one period:
- Thirty days, excluding official holidays, for the worker, from the date they were notified of the decision, to file a written grievance with the competent body at the employer.
- Fifteen days for the employer, from the submission of the grievance, to decide it in writing.
- Thirty days, excluding official holidays, for the worker, from the date the grievance was rejected or the expiry of the period set for deciding it, whichever is earlier, to object before the labour courts (المحاكم العمالية).
Moving one of these periods into the place of another can cost a right. An employee who takes the fifteen days as the period for their own grievance has cut that period to half. An employee who stops at the first thirty days may believe their remedy ended on day thirty, when the third period had not yet begun to run.
The words “whichever is earlier” in the third period are a condition in the text, not a detail. Where the employer does not reply, the thirty days run from the day the period for deciding the grievance expires, not from the day a reply arrives. Waiting for a rejection letter, in the belief that the period has not yet started, leaves an employee already late: the period began to run before the letter came, and a late letter does not open it again.
What a collective grievance shows after it is closed
The file is closed with a reply, but the cause remains a management matter. A collective grievance points to a particular place in the establishment: a policy drafted around a single case that could not accommodate any other; a decision applied without adequate notice; or a difference in treatment between two teams that was neither intended nor noticed. Each of these is addressed by reviewing what was issued, not by following up on the employees who lodged the grievance.
The provisions relied on are those of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) as published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development: Article 72 (notification of a penalty decision, the internal grievance, the employer’s reply period and the objection before the labour courts) and Article 234 (the twelve month period for a claim, counted from the end of the employment relationship, with its two exceptions). Royal Decree M/44 amended Article 72 of the Labor Law, and the route set out above is that article as amended. Article 234 of the Labor Law was added by Royal Decree M/14, and Royal Decree M/44 did not amend it. The description of amicable settlement is taken from the Ministry’s service page.
This is an explanation of the concept and of the statutory provisions cited, not legal advice.
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