Suspension

Definition of suspension

Suspension (الإيقاف عن العمل), in full suspension from work without pay, is a disciplinary penalty that bars an employee from doing their work for a set period and withholds their wage for that period. It is the fifth penalty in the closed list in Article 66 of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل), which names it as suspension from work with deprivation of the wage.

Two questions are specific to suspension: what its limit is measured in, and what the Labor Law requires before it can be imposed. The answers lie in Articles 66 to 72 of the Labor Law.

Suspension in the closed list of Article 66 of the Labor Law

Article 66 of the Labor Law confines the disciplinary penalties that may be imposed to six, and suspension is the fifth of them:

1. A warning.
2. A fine.
3. Withholding or deferring a raise, for a period of no more than one year.
4. Deferring a promotion, for a period of no more than one year.
5. Suspension from work without pay.
6. Dismissal in the cases the Labor Law provides.

The list is closed, so a penalty outside it has no basis in Article 66 of the Labor Law. The two time limits in the third and fourth items are part of their text, and they can be lost when the list is summarised.

Article 67 of the Labor Law bars the employer from imposing any penalty not provided for in the Labor Law or in the work regulation (لائحة تنظيم العمل). The only statutory route to a penalty beyond those in the Labor Law is therefore the work regulation, within its limits. Where nullity arises, it comes from Article 8 of the Labor Law, which voids any term that conflicts with the Labor Law, and not from Article 67 of the Labor Law, which states the prohibition. How the closed list bears on a move to a lower grade is examined under demotion.

The limit on suspension is a number of days, not an amount

Article 70 of the Labor Law contains five rules. The first two apply to every disciplinary penalty, suspension included, and the remaining three are ceilings on the size or the length of a penalty.

• Conduct outside the workplace. No disciplinary penalty may be imposed for something the employee did outside the workplace, unless it is connected with the work, with the employer or with the responsible manager. The penalty is then barred altogether, not merely limited in size.
• One penalty per violation. No more than one penalty may be imposed for a single violation. The rule reaches every penalty in Article 66 of the Labor Law, suspension among them, so a suspension cannot be added to a fine for the same violation.
• The fine for a single violation. It may not exceed five days’ wage.
• Deductions for fines in one month. No more than five days’ wage may be deducted from the wage in one month to settle fines.
• The length of suspension. Suspension from work without pay may not exceed five days in a month.

An error can arise from the difference between the last rule and the two before it. The third and fourth rules are money ceilings; the fifth is a limit on duration. The five days of suspension are counted as calendar days. They are not converted into an amount, and they are not measured against the ceiling on fines. Counting “five days” three times and treating the result as a single rule confuses a limit on money with a limit on time.

The wage withheld during suspension

Article 66 and Article 70 of the Labor Law both refer to the wage without qualifying it. Article 2 of the Labor Law states the rule of interpretation expressly: the wage, where unqualified, means the actual wage (الأجر الفعلي). What the employee forgoes for the days of suspension is therefore measured on the actual wage, not on the basic wage (الأجر الأساسي), and the two fine ceilings in Article 70 of the Labor Law are measured on the actual wage for the same reason. This is not an inferred rule. It applies a rule of interpretation that Article 2 of the Labor Law states in terms.

A worked example of suspension: three equal figures, three different rules

Take an employee paid a monthly actual wage. Applied to that wage, the three figures in Article 70 of the Labor Law are these:

• The ceiling on a fine for a single violation: five days of the employee’s actual wage.
• The ceiling on deductions for fines in one month: five days of actual wage as well.
• The effect of five days’ suspension in a month: the employee forgoes the actual wage for those five days.

The example is stated in days of actual wage and not in riyals. In the sources we reviewed, we found no general rule in the Labor Law or in its Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية) fixing the divisor used to convert a monthly wage into a day’s wage, so a riyal figure for one day would rest on a choice the text does not make. The divisor question is examined under pro rata salary.

On this wage the three amounts are equal, but they are still three rules rather than one. They separate as soon as the facts change. The first two limit an amount, and they remain limits on an amount whatever period is involved. The third limits a count of days, and the amount forgone moves with the wage. Their equality in a single example is what can tempt a reader to merge them into one rule.

Suspension also cannot be added to a fine for the same violation, because the second rule in Article 70 of the Labor Law bars more than one penalty for a single violation. That rule is general to every penalty; it is not a rule about fines.

The procedure before suspension cannot be shortened

Article 71 of the Labor Law bars imposing any penalty until the employer has notified the employee in writing of what is alleged against them, questioned them, and investigated their defence, with all of this recorded in a minute placed in the employee’s file.

Article 71 of the Labor Law then adds a narrow exception. The questioning may be oral in minor violations whose penalty goes no further than a warning or a fine deducting no more than one day’s wage, provided this is recorded in the minute. The one day ceiling is measured on the actual wage, because Article 71 of the Labor Law uses the word wage without qualification and Article 2 of the Labor Law provides that the wage, where unqualified, means the actual wage.

The effect on suspension is direct: suspension is outside the exception. The oral route depends on a penalty that goes no further than a warning or a one day fine, and suspension is neither. Oral questioning is therefore never sufficient before a suspension. How the exception works for a warning given by word of mouth is examined under verbal warning.

The time limits on imposing suspension

Article 69 of the Labor Law sets two time limits, not one:

• An employee may not be accused of a violation more than thirty days after it was discovered.
• A disciplinary penalty may not be imposed more than thirty days after the end of the investigation into the violation and its proof against the employee.

Article 68 of the Labor Law adds a further limit, on repetition. A penalty may not be made heavier for a repeated violation once 180 days have passed since the employee was notified of the penalty imposed for the earlier violation. An earlier violation therefore does not stay available indefinitely when the severity of a later penalty is decided.

After suspension is imposed: Article 72 of the Labor Law and its periods

Article 72 of the Labor Law sets out four steps in sequence. Three of them carry a period, and each period belongs to a particular party and starts from a particular event:

1. Notification. The employee must be notified in writing of the decision imposing the penalty. If they refuse to take delivery, or are absent, the notice is sent by registered letter to the address shown in their file.
2. The grievance. The employee may file a written grievance with the competent body at the employer within thirty days, excluding official holidays, from the date they were notified of the decision. It is an internal step, not a complaint to the labour office or a claim before a court.
3. The reply period. The employer must decide the grievance in writing within fifteen days of its submission.
4. The objection. If the grievance is rejected, or is not decided in writing within those fifteen days, the employee may object before the labour courts (المحاكم العمالية) within thirty days, excluding official holidays, from the date of rejection or the expiry of the period set for deciding the grievance, whichever is earlier.

Without the words “whichever is earlier”, the rule changes. The last thirty days have two possible starting points, and the earlier of them is taken. Counting from the submission of the grievance: if it is rejected on day 9, the period runs from day 9; if no reply comes at all, it runs from day 15; and if a rejection arrives late, on day 40, the period has already been running since day 15, because a late letter does not open a new period. An employee who relies on a version of the article without that qualifier can wait for a slow reply until the period has closed, believing it has not yet begun.

A second qualifier in the article concerns where its exclusion sits, not how long the periods are. The words “excluding official holidays” attach to the first thirty days and to the last thirty days. They do not attach to the fifteen days that form the employer’s reply period, and attaching them there carries a qualifier from elsewhere into the text of the Labor Law.

The three periods cover three acts by two parties. The first is the employee’s, to file the internal grievance; the second is the employer’s, to decide it in writing; the third is the employee’s again, to object before the courts. One error is to treat the fifteen days as the employee’s period for the grievance, when they are the employer’s period to reply. Another is to stop at the first thirty days and conclude that nothing remains after day 30, when the period for the court objection had not yet begun. The grievance period against a disciplinary penalty is also distinct from the grievance period in Article 91 of the Labor Law, and carrying one over to the other can cost a right. How the grievance route is assigned to the competent body is examined under ombudsman.

The articles cited above deal with suspension as a penalty: the limit on its length, the procedure before it and the periods around it. Those articles do not settle whether an employee may be kept from work while an investigation is under way other than through suspension imposed as a penalty, and we draw no rule on that question from them.

The provisions relied on are those of the Saudi Labor Law as published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development: Article 2 (the wage, where unqualified, is the actual wage), Article 8 (terms that conflict with the Labor Law), Article 66 (the closed list of penalties), Article 67 (no penalty outside the Labor Law or the work regulation), Article 68 (no heavier penalty for a repeated violation after 180 days), Article 69 (the two thirty day limits), Article 70 (the five rules on penalties, including the limit on suspension), Article 71 (the procedure before a penalty, and the oral questioning exception), Article 72 (notification, the grievance and the objection) and Article 91 (cited only to distinguish its grievance period). Royal Decree M/44 amended a number of provisions of the Labor Law, among them Article 72 of the Labor Law, and the route set out above is that article as amended. That decree did not amend Articles 66 to 71 of the Labor Law or Article 91 of the Labor Law, and while it added definitions to Article 2 of the Labor Law, it left the definitions of the basic wage and the actual wage unchanged.

Before a suspension decision is signed

A suspension decision stays open to review later when its steps follow this order. Record the date the violation was discovered first; then prepare the minute, with the notification, the questioning and the defence; then impose the penalty within the time limit; then give written notice of it. A missing document does not show on the day the decision is signed. It shows on the day the decision is challenged.

This is an explanation of the concept and of the statutory provisions cited, not legal advice.

Related terms

• Positive Discipline
• Employee File
• Demotion
• Verbal Warning
• Ombudsman