A company in Abu Dhabi has been directed to compensate one of its workers AED 28,220 after a court found he had logged extended hours and reported for duty on public holidays, even though nothing in the company’s records showed he had been formally instructed to do so.
The dispute reached the Abu Dhabi Labour Court of First Instance after the employee brought a case seeking payment for additional hours worked and for shifts completed on weekend holidays across a five-month stretch, according to Gulf Today.
To examine the claim, the court brought in an expert, whose review of the case became central to the ruling. The expert calculated that the worker had put in 15-hour days along with four supplementary hours, a pattern spanning 1,258 days. Despite the records confirming the four extra hours, the expert noted an absence of any paperwork authorising the additional workload.
Under the rules governing such arrangements, a company can require an employee to perform more than two hours of overtime daily only when particular conditions are met.
The expert’s findings also addressed holiday work, identifying 102 days on which the employee had reported for duty during official rest periods. Labour regulations entitle a worker in this situation either to a substitute day off or to that day’s pay supplemented by an additional 50 per cent of the basic wage.
In its decision, the court accepted that the 15-hour workdays totalling 1,258 days entitled the employee to AED 17,690. It separately recognised 100 holiday days worked without assignment, carrying a further entitlement of AED 10,530, which together produced the AED 28,220 figure.
The regulations allowing extended overtime apply strictly within defined limits, leaving employers unable to impose such hours outside the permitted framework.
