Protecting Employees’ Wages in Accordance with Saudi Labour Law: Should We Do More?

Abstract

The Saudi government intends to enhance the private sector working environment and to make it more attractive to potential employees by establishing rules and programs like the Wages Protection System, which aims to monitor procedures for paying employees’ salaries; a private company will be founded in the near future for the same reason. This paper examines the rules for paying employees’ wages in the private sector, in particular, the issue of not paying their wages by the date due, and how the Saudi Labour Law and the Wages Protection System deal with the issue, to reveal whether there is a need to reform the current approach. The paper analyses mainly legal materials related to Saudi Labour Law such as books, the courts judgments published by the Commission for the Settlement of Labour Disputes in Saudi Arabia and relative information provided on the web sites of The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development. In brief, this study suggests amending the current approaches relevant to this issue, as there are various weaknesses and concerns that have been identified in the approaches adopted in Saudi Labour Law to dealing with the delayed payment of workers’ salaries.