What Musaned is
Musaned (مساند) is the name of an electronic platform whose field is domestic labour. The Musaned platform is a channel through which procedures relating to domestic workers are carried out, and procedures relating to no other group.
The qualifier in that definition is its substance. Everything else said about Musaned follows from the fact that its field is domestic labour: domestic workers hold a particular position under the Saudi Labor Law, and Musaned can be confused with other platforms.
The definition does not list the platform’s services, its steps or its fees. Anyone who needs a particular service takes its details from the platform itself and from the body that runs it.
Musaned and domestic workers outside the Labor Law
Article 7 of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) excludes five categories from the application of its provisions: members of the employer’s family, meaning the spouse, ascendants and descendants, working in an establishment that employs nobody else; players and coaches of sports clubs and federations; domestic workers and those in their position (العمالة المنزلية ومن في حكمهم); private farm workers, shepherds and those in their position; and workers who are not Saudi and who come to carry out a specific task for no more than two months. The full set of categories, and the groups the Labor Law covers only in part, are set out under employment status.
Article 7 of the Labor Law then provides that the Minister, in coordination with the competent authorities, issues one or more regulations for four of those five categories, every category except sports players and coaches. Those regulations cover the rights, duties and other special provisions of each category.
The reach of the exclusion is wide. The provisions of the Labor Law on working hours, rest and deductions from wages, and the rules connected with them, do not apply to a domestic worker, who is governed by a separate regulation. Carrying a Labor Law rule over to a domestic worker applies a text to someone that same text has excluded.
Royal Decree M/44 of 1446H amended Article 7 of the Labor Law. The exclusion of domestic workers appears in Article 7 of the Labor Law both before and after that amendment.
The instruments behind Musaned’s field
Two published instruments for domestic labour can be cited by name: the regulation on domestic workers (لائحة العمالة المنزلية), issued by Decision No. 40676 dated 17/3/1445H, and the controls on improving the contractual relationship of domestic workers (ضوابط تحسين العلاقة التعاقدية للعمالة المنزلية), issued by Decision No. 133811 dated 18/9/1445H. Both are cited in the preamble of the Schedule of Violations and Penalties, Ministerial Decision No. 112377, published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development. They are named so that a reader can turn to them. No rule from inside either is stated in the definition of Musaned, as their text was not among the sources we reviewed.
Musaned is not the channel for wage protection files
Files under the Wage Protection System are uploaded on the Mudad platform, not on Musaned.
The two platforms differ in their field, not only in their names. Mudad is the interface through which an establishment files under wage protection for the wages of its workers, while Musaned’s field is domestic labour. Sending an establishment to Musaned with a wage protection file sends it to a channel whose field does not include that file.
Musaned as a name, and «المساندة» as a description
In Arabic, Musaned shares its root with «المساندة», but the platform’s name and the descriptive word do not refer to the same thing, and the overlap can cause confusion in writing:
- «مساند» is a proper name: the name of the platform whose field is domestic labour, and the term defined above.
- «المساندة» is a descriptive word meaning supporting or auxiliary, and it appears in names that have no connection with the platform. Saudization decisions use it in «المهن الإدارية المساندة», the administrative support professions. They form an occupational group governed by a separate Saudization decision, and their field is private sector establishments, not households. That group is covered in our guide to the Saudization of administrative support professions, and it plays no part in the definition of Musaned.
- The Schedule of Violations and Penalties has two separate categories that might be mistaken for one another: one headed «ضوابط الإعلانات على خدمات العمالة المساندة», the controls on advertisements for support labour services, and another headed «لائحة العمالة المنزلية», the regulation on domestic workers. What the Schedule shows is that they are two separate categories in the table. It does not decide whether they concern one subject or two, and the definition of Musaned takes no view on that question.
In Arabic writing, therefore, the bare word is not used where it could carry either meaning. «منصّة مساند», the Musaned platform, is written when the platform is meant, and «المهن الإدارية المساندة» is written in full when the occupational group is meant. Shortening either one produces a sentence that two readers can take in two different ways.
Musaned is a channel, and the duty sits in its instrument
What holds for every platform holds for Musaned: a platform is a channel through which a service is delivered, not a source of obligation. The duty lies in the regulation or in the controls, and the platform is the means by which it is discharged. A duty is therefore not written in the name of a platform, because a sentence of that kind leaves the reader with no text to go back to. The instrument answers the question of what requires a step, and the platform answers the question of where the step is taken. Naming them in separate clauses keeps both answers visible.
One limit follows from this. Everything that concerns a domestic worker’s contract, wage, hours and the ending of the relationship is found in the regulation on domestic workers and the controls named above, not in the Labor Law and not in the definition of Musaned.
What Musaned’s field means for an establishment
For the books of a private sector establishment, the effect is limited but clear. A domestic worker is not a worker of the establishment, and so does not belong in the establishment’s payroll. That relationship is governed by the regulation on domestic workers rather than by the Labor Law, by virtue of the exclusion in Article 7 of the Labor Law.
Where a domestic worker stands in an establishment’s headcount, or in the calculation of its Saudization rates, is a separate question. The exclusion in Article 7 of the Labor Law is a rule about whether the Labor Law applies, and it does not extend to the rules of a programme that has a decision and a calculation of its own. In the sources we reviewed, including the procedural guide to the Nitaqat programme, we found no rule on that point, so none is drawn.
The statutory provision relied on is Article 7 of the Saudi Labor Law as published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development (the excluded categories and the regulations issued for four of them). Royal Decree M/44 of 1446H amended Article 7 of the Labor Law. The two instruments for domestic labour are named from the preamble of Ministerial Decision No. 112377 dated 21/8/1447H, the Schedule of Violations and Penalties.
Keeping Musaned apart from the rules around it
Musaned names a channel. The instruments for domestic labour and the programmes that count an establishment’s workers are separate matters, and what is said about the platform settles none of them.
This is an explanation of the concept and of the statutory provisions cited, not legal advice.
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