Demande directe (CEACR) - adoptée 2009, publiée 99ème session CIT (2010)

Convention (n° 1) sur la durée du travail (industrie), 1919 - Arabie saoudite (Ratification: 1978)

The Committee notes the adoption of a new Labour Law (Royal Decree No. M/51 of 27 September 2005), which essentially reproduces the provisions on hours of work of the previous Labour Law (Royal Decree No. M/21 of 15 November 1969).

Article 6, paragraph 1, of the Convention. Permanent exceptions. The Committee notes that section 108 of the new Labour Law provides that, for preparatory and intermittent jobs, the maximum working hours will be specified by regulations. The Committee requests the Government to indicate whether these regulations have already been issued and, if so, to transmit copies.

Article 6, paragraph 2. Maximum limits on additional hours of work. The Committee notes that under section 106 of the new Labour Law, the actual working hours in the case of annual inventory activities, accident, imminent loss of perishable materials or seasonal activities may not exceed ten hours a day or 60 hours a week while the maximum overtime hours allowed per year is to be determined by a decision of the Minister of Labour. In this connection, the Committee notes the adoption of Ministerial Order No. 2832 of 2006 which fixes the maximum of additional hours per year at 480 hours. The Committee considers that despite the fact that the Convention does not prescribe any specific limit to the total number of additional hours which may be worked during a specified period in case of permanent or temporary exceptions, a total of 480 hours a year may not be considered consistent with the requirements of the Convention. The Committee recalls that the question of fixing a reasonable annual limit (in the absence of any specific provision in the Labour Law of 1969), in conformity with the Convention’s objectives, has been the subject of numerous comments over the past 25 years.

In this regard, the Committee wishes to refer to paragraph 144 of its General Survey of 2005 on hours of work in which it noted that even though the establishment of specific limits to the total number of additional hours is left to the competent authorities, this does not mean that such authorities have unlimited discretion in this regard. Such limits must be “reasonable” and they must be prescribed in line with the general goal of the instruments, namely to establish the eight-hour day and 48-hour week as a legal standard of hours of work in order to provide protection against excessive fatigue and to ensure reasonable leisure and opportunities for recreation and social life. The Committee also wishes to draw the Government’s attention to the reference made in the same paragraph of the General Survey to the preparatory work that led to the adoption of Convention No. 1 which gives some guidance as to what may be considered under the Convention as permissible limits on the number of additional hours. More concretely, as far as hours of work in industry are concerned, the limits considered to be permissible amounted to a total of 60 hours a week in the case of permanent exceptions and 150 hours a year in the case of temporary exceptions, or 100 hours a year for non-seasonal activities. As far as hours of work in commerce and offices are concerned, at the time of the adoption of Convention No. 30, such limits amounted to ten hours a day and 60 hours a week for intermittent work and ten hours a day and 54 hours a week for preparatory or complementary work. In light of the preceding observations, the Committee requests the Government to consider all appropriate action, including amending Ministerial Order No. 2832 of 2006, in order to establish a reasonable limit on the number of additional hours in case of certain exceptions and thus bring the national legislation into conformity with the requirements of this Article of the Convention.

Part VI of the report form. Application in practice. The Committee would be grateful if the Government would provide together with its next report up to date information on the application of the Convention in practice including, for instance, statistics on the number of workers covered by the relevant legislation, extracts from labour inspection reports showing the number and nature of infringements of the working time legislation observed and the sanctions imposed, statistical information on the hours of overtime worked in the cases covered by Articles 3 and 6 of the Convention, any difficulties encountered in the implementation of the Convention, etc.