Workers’ Committee

What a workers’ committee is

A workers’ committee (اللجنة العمالية) is the committee within an establishment that the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) names as the body that disposes of the fines imposed on the establishment’s workers. Article 73 of the Labor Law is the only place in the Law that names it. The Law attaches one specific effect to the committee’s existence, but it neither creates the committee nor sets out how it is constituted.

The Labor Law sets no number of members, no method of selection, no term of office and no headcount at which an establishment must form one. Article 73 of the Labor Law describes only two situations: an establishment that has a committee, and one that does not. In the sources we reviewed, we found no instrument governing how a workers’ committee is formed. That describes how far our review reached; it is not a finding that no such instrument exists.

Article 73 of the Labor Law gives the committee no function beyond disposing of fines. It assigns the committee no competence to negotiate on the workers’ behalf and none to represent them before an outside body, and that silence is not a grant of either.

The workers’ committee in Article 73 of the Labor Law

Article 73 of the Labor Law contains three provisions in sequence:

1. A special register. The employer must record the fines it imposes on a worker in a special register, stating the worker’s name, the amount of their wage, the amount of the fine, the reason for imposing it and the date.
2. A restriction on purpose. Fines may be disposed of only in what benefits the establishment’s workers. The proceeds are therefore not the establishment’s to use as it chooses.
3. A restriction on who disposes of them. The disposal is made by the workers’ committee in the establishment, and where there is no committee, the fines are disposed of with the Ministry’s approval.

We do not treat the committee’s disposal of the proceeds as curing a fine that was wrongly imposed. Whether the penalty itself is valid turns on the provisions governing discipline, and disposing of the proceeds is a later question.

What can reach the fines a workers’ committee disposes of

Article 73 of the Labor Law concerns the fine alone. The fine is the second of the six penalties in the closed list in Article 66 of the Labor Law: a warning, a fine, withholding or deferring a raise for up to one year, deferring promotion for up to one year, suspension from work without pay, and dismissal in the cases the Law provides.

Five of those six produce no sum to enter in the register. Suspension can be mistaken for one, because the worker loses the wage for the days of suspension. What is lost there is a wage that was never earned, not an amount collected, so under Article 73 of the Labor Law there are no proceeds to dispose of and nothing to record.

Two of the limits in Article 70 of the Labor Law cap what can enter: a fine for a single violation may not exceed five days’ wage, and no more than five days’ wage may be deducted from the worker’s wage in one month to satisfy fines. They are two rules rather than one, the first on the size of the penalty and the second on the size of the monthly deduction. The wage in both is unqualified, so under the reading rule in Article 2 of the Labor Law it is the actual wage (الأجر الفعلي).

A limit on where a penalty can come from applies before any of this. Article 67 of the Labor Law bars the employer from imposing any penalty not stated in the Labor Law or in the work regulation (لائحة تنظيم العمل). Under Article 13 of the Labor Law, the work regulation is prepared on the Ministry’s model, may add only conditions that do not conflict with the Law, and must be posted where those subject to it can see it. The proceeds a workers’ committee disposes of can therefore consist only of fines grounded in one of those two sources. Where a term provides for a penalty outside them, the term is void under Article 8 of the Labor Law, which voids any term contradicting the Law. Article 67 of the Labor Law states a prohibition and does not itself state a nullity.

A worked example of the ceiling on a workers’ committee’s proceeds

Take an employee whose actual wage is SAR 6,000 a month. A ceiling counted in days needs a day’s wage, and a day’s wage needs a divisor. We found no general rule in the Labor Law or its Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية) setting the divisor that converts a monthly wage into a day’s wage; how that choice is made is covered under pro rata salary. This example uses an assumed month of 30 days, which gives a day’s wage of SAR 200:

• The highest fine for a single violation: 200 × 5 = SAR 1,000.
• The most that can be deducted from the employee for fines in one month: 200 × 5 = SAR 1,000 as well.

Suppose three fines of SAR 1,000 each are imposed on the employee in the same month, each validly imposed for one of three distinct violations. What enters the proceeds from that employee in that month is SAR 1,000, not SAR 3,000, because the monthly ceiling limits the deduction, not the imposing of the fine. Whether the remaining SAR 2,000 is deducted in later months or lapses is something we found nothing in our sources to settle, and we draw no conclusion about it.

Deductions that never reach a workers’ committee

Not every amount deducted from a worker’s wage is a fine, and nothing other than a fine enters the register in Article 73 of the Labor Law or falls under its restriction to what benefits the establishment’s workers:

• A deduction for damage the worker caused. It falls under Article 91 of the Labor Law. Its conditions are that the loss, damage or destruction of machines or products arose from the worker’s fault or from a breach of the employer’s instructions, and not from a third party’s fault or from force majeure. The amount deducted goes to repair or restoration and may not exceed five days’ wage in each month, so it is compensation for harm, not a disciplinary penalty. A worker may challenge it before the labour court, and if the court finds that the employer had no right to recover, or awards less, the employer must return what was wrongly deducted within seven days of the judgment. The grievance window for both parties is fifteen working days, after which the right lapses.
• The deductions that need no written consent. They are listed in Article 92 of the Labor Law. They include recovery of loans from the employer at no more than 10% of the wage, social insurance contributions, contributions to a savings fund and loans due to it, instalments on an employer housing scheme, and satisfaction of a debt in execution of a judicial judgment at no more than a quarter of the wage due each month unless the judgment provides otherwise, which is the case covered under wage garnishment. None of these is a fine. Article 92 of the Labor Law also lists fines among those deductions, alongside the amount deducted for damage, and of the two only the fine falls under Article 73 of the Labor Law.

Article 93 of the Labor Law caps the total. Deducted amounts may not exceed half the wage due to the worker, unless the labour court is satisfied that a larger deduction is possible, or that the worker needs more than half their wage. In that last case the worker is not given more than three quarters of their wage, whatever the circumstances. So the article has three limbs, not one percentage, and reducing it to a flat ceiling of half drops both exceptions.

The workers’ committee and the notification and objection route

Article 73 of the Labor Law can be mistaken for the article that requires a penalty to be notified in writing and gives the worker a period to object. It contains neither. It deals with the fines register and the disposal of fines, and with nothing else.

Notification, the grievance and the objection sit in Article 72 of the Labor Law. The worker must be notified of the penalty decision in writing, and has thirty days, excluding official holidays, from that notification to file a written grievance with the competent body at the employer. The fifteen days in that article are the employer’s period to decide the grievance in writing. If the grievance is rejected, or is not decided within those fifteen days, the worker may object before the labour courts within thirty days, excluding official holidays, from the rejection or the expiry of the fifteen days, whichever is earlier. Moving the fifteen days to the worker’s side halves the worker’s period and can cost the worker a right. Neither step involves the workers’ committee, because the Labor Law names the committee only in Article 73. How the written notice requirement bears on a lighter measure is covered under verbal warning.

When an establishment has no workers’ committee

This is the point that can be misread in both directions. Having no committee does not exempt the establishment from the restriction. It changes the body through which disposal is made: the Ministry’s approval takes the committee’s place.

The other two provisions stand in both cases: the special register with its five particulars, and the restriction of disposal to what benefits the establishment’s workers. An establishment without a committee is released from neither.

Article 73 of the Labor Law names the Ministry as the body whose approval is required where there is no committee, but it does not describe the form that approval takes or the procedure for obtaining it, and in the sources we reviewed, we found no provision setting out either.

How a workers’ committee differs from other internal bodies

• The workers’ committee. It is the body that Article 73 of the Labor Law names, and the effect the Law attaches to it is the disposal of fines.
• A committee to investigate abuse at work. It is formed under Article 55 of the model work regulation (النموذج الموحّد) annexed to the Implementing Regulation, by a decision of the competent official, when a complaint or report of abuse (الإيذاء) is submitted. Its task is to investigate the case, review the evidence and recommend the appropriate disciplinary penalty for whoever is proved to have committed it. It is formed in response to a particular case, whereas Article 73 of the Labor Law names the workers’ committee without reference to any case.
• A collective grievance. It is not a body at all, but a grievance raised by more than one worker over a single shared cause.

Running these together produces a reassuring but wrong sentence: that an establishment has a single committee to which every complaint and every disposal of fines is referred. They differ in who forms them and in what they do.

The same holds for arrangements an establishment creates for itself. A self managed team, a quality circle or an ombudsman does not inherit the effect that Article 73 of the Labor Law attaches to the workers’ committee, and forming one does not stand in for the committee in disposing of fines.

The provisions behind the workers’ committee

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 reading rule that an unqualified wage is the actual wage), Article 8 (the voidness of a term contradicting the Law), Article 13 (the work regulation), Article 66 (the closed list of penalties), Article 67 (no penalty outside the Labor Law or the work regulation), Article 70 (the two fine caps), Article 72 (notification, the grievance and the objection before the labour courts), Article 73 (the fines register, the restriction on disposing of fines and the workers’ committee), Article 91 (deduction against damage), Article 92 (deductions without written consent) and Article 93 (the aggregate ceiling), together with Article 55 of the model work regulation on the committee that investigates abuse. Royal Decree M/44 of 1446H, in force since 19 February 2025, amended Article 72 of the Labor Law, and the periods stated above are taken from the consolidated text published after that amendment. That decree did not amend Articles 66, 67, 70, 91, 92 or 93 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. The consolidated text records the amendment of Article 73 of the Labor Law by Royal Decree M/46 of 1436H, not by M/44.

Before relying on a workers’ committee

An establishment that wants to dispose of the proceeds of fines starts from one question that comes before every other: does it have a workers’ committee or not? The answer decides the body through which the disposal is made, and neither answer releases the establishment from keeping the register or from spending the proceeds only on what benefits its workers.

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

Related terms

• Wage Garnishment
• Ombudsman
• Positive Discipline
• Demotion
• Payroll Statement