Working hours and overtime, and the word that halves the cheque

The baseline: 8 and 48

Article 17(1) of Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 sets maximum normal working hours at eight hours per day or 48 hours per week. The Cabinet may raise or lower this for particular economic sectors or categories of worker.

Two adjustments sit in the Implementing Regulation, Cabinet Resolution No. 1 of 2022, at Article 15:

• Ramadan. Regular working hours are reduced by two hours during the holy month. Note what the provision does not say: it attaches no condition of religion. It reduces the regular working hours, full stop.
• Remote work. Where a worker asks to work remotely, inside or outside the country, and the employer agrees, the employer may require specific working hours — Article 17(6).

If you work for more than one employer, or on any pattern other than full-time, Article 17(5) stops any of those employers from requiring more than the hours agreed in your contract, except with your written consent.

Breaks, and the hour that is not yours

Article 18 prohibits working more than five consecutive hours without a break, or breaks totalling not less than one hour — and states expressly that these periods are not included in the working hours.

That last clause is why a nine-to-six day with an hour for lunch is a lawful eight-hour day rather than a nine-hour one. It also means an employer who keeps you on site for nine hours and gives you no break is in breach of Article 18 even though your worked hours came to eight. Shift establishments and some job categories — field jobs are the example the article gives — arrange hours and breaks differently, according to the classification set in the Regulation.

Does the commute count? Usually not — with three exceptions

Article 17(3) keeps the journey between home and workplace outside working hours. Article 15(1) of the Implementing Regulation then names the cases where it is counted, and they are more useful than they look:

• delay in transit caused by bad weather, in response to warnings from the National Centre of Meteorology about weather changes and fluctuations;
• delay in transit in employer-provided transport because of a traffic accident or an emergency breakdown;
• where the parties expressly agree to it in the contract.

The first of those matters in practice every time Dubai floods and staff spend three hours on Sheikh Zayed Road. On an NCM warning, that time is working time.

Overtime: the two-hour cap, and the ceiling above it

Article 19(1) allows an employer to instruct overtime beyond normal hours provided it does not exceed two hours per day. More than that is permitted only under the conditions in the Regulation, and Article 15(3) makes those narrow: where the work is necessary to prevent a serious loss or a serious accident, or to eliminate or mitigate its effects. Routine deadline pressure is not on that list.

An oddity in the text worth knowing about. Article 19(1) closes with: "In all cases, the total working hours shall not exceed (144) one hundred and forty four hours every (3) three weeks." Do the arithmetic — 48 hours a week over three weeks is exactly 144. Read literally, the ceiling leaves no room for any overtime at all across a three-week window, which cannot be what a provision expressly authorising overtime intends. In practice the operative limit applied by employers and MOHRE is the two-hours-per-day cap. We flag the tension rather than resolve it: if you are working sustained overtime on a 48-hour contract, the 144-hour ceiling is a real sentence in the statute and it is on your side of the argument.

The rate — and the word that decides it

Article 19(2): where work conditions require more than normal hours, the excess is overtime, for which the worker receives "a wage equal to the wage corresponding to the normal working hours, which is calculated according to the basic wage, plus an increase of not less than 25% of that wage."

So the base of the calculation is the basic wage — the contract figure for the work itself, excluding allowances — not the total package. The government portal states the same thing, in the same words: remuneration "which is based on basic salary". This is the most commonly and expensively misunderstood rule in the Labour Law.

Article 19(3) raises the uplift to not less than 50% where the overtime falls between 10 pm and 4 am. Workers working on shifts are expressly excluded from that clause — the night premium is for people pulled into unsocial hours, not for those whose contracted rota already runs through them. The 25% baseline in Article 19(2) is not disapplied for shift workers.

Worked through

Package of AED 20,000 a month, of which AED 10,000 is basic salary. Twenty overtime hours in the month, daytime.

Run the same twenty hours on the assumption that overtime tracks the total package and you get AED 104.17 an hour and AED 2,083 for the month — double, and wrong. The gap is not a rounding matter; it is the entire allowances half of the package, and it is the same lever that decides your gratuity and your untaken-leave payout. A contract that pushes basic down and allowances up quietly reduces all three at once.

The 30-day and 8-hour divisors used to turn a monthly figure into an hourly one are standard payroll and MOHRE practice, not numbers written into Article 19. A contract specifying a different basis will be applied as written, so check yours.

Working the weekend — where the statute and the portal diverge

First, the entitlement itself: Article 21 gives a paid weekend of not less than one day, per the contract or work regulation. Article 19(5) then forbids instructing a worker to work more than two consecutive weekend days, except for day workers.

Where circumstances require work on the contractual weekend, Article 19(4) gives the employer a choice: another day off, or payment. The payment formula is drafted differently from the overtime formula, and the difference is not accidental:

Overtime — Art. 19(2)	the wage for normal working hours, calculated according to the basic wage, + at least 25% of that wage
Weekend work — Art. 19(4)	the wage of that day according to the wage established for normal working days, + at least 50% of the basic wage for that day

In Article 19(2) the drafters said the base is calculated on the basic wage. In Article 19(4) they did not — they set the base at the wage established for normal working days, and then used the term "basic wage" for the uplift only, in the same sentence. When a drafter uses a defined term in one half of a sentence and a different phrase in the other half, the ordinary reading is that they meant two different things.

The divergence. The government portal describes weekend pay as "a pay equal to normal working hours' remuneration (which is based on basic salary) plus 50 per cent of that pay" — carrying the basic-salary qualifier across from the overtime rule into the weekend rule, where the statute does not put it. On the same AED 20,000 / AED 10,000 package, one weekend day is worth AED 500 on the portal's reading and AED 833.33 on the statute's: (20,000 ÷ 30) + (10,000 ÷ 30 × 0.5). We state the statutory reading because it follows the text, and flag it as a reading rather than a settled figure. If you are arguing it, quote Article 19(4) itself — the phrase "according to the wage established for normal working days" is the whole point.

Who these rules do not apply to at all

Before calculating anything, check whether you are inside the regime. Article 20 lets the Regulation exclude categories of worker from the working-hours provisions, and Article 15(4) of Cabinet Resolution No. 1 of 2022 lists them:

• chairpersons and members of boards of directors;
• persons occupying supervisory positions, if the position grants them the authority of the employer;
• crews of naval vessels and seafarers enjoying special service conditions by the nature of the work;
• those in work that must, for technical reasons, be carried on continuously by succession shift — subject to average working hours not exceeding 56 hours per week;
• preparatory or supplementary work that must necessarily be done outside the establishment's general time limits.

The second one is where most disputes live. "Supervisory position" is not a job title you can be given for free — the exclusion applies only if the position grants the authority of the employer. Being called a manager while having no power to hire, discipline or bind the company does not put you outside the hours rules, and an employer relying on the label alone is on weak ground. Note too that the fourth category is not an unlimited exclusion: it carries its own 56-hour weekly average as a ceiling.

The summer midday break — in force right now

Under Ministerial Resolution No. 44 of 2022, all work carried out directly under the sun and in open places is prohibited between 12:30 pm and 3:00 pm, from 15 June to 15 September every year. MOHRE runs it as the Occupational Heat Stress Prevention Policy.

The employer's duties during the ban are not merely to stop work. Companies must provide shaded rest areas, adequate cooling, sufficient drinking water to prevent dehydration, and first-aid equipment at work sites.

A short list of activities is exempted for technical reasons: laying asphalt or pouring concrete where postponing past the break is unfeasible; work needed to contain hazards or repair damage affecting the community, such as an interruption to the water supply; and work that requires a permit from a relevant government authority. Everything else stops.

Violations are reported to MOHRE directly — call centre 600590000, or the "Add Complaint" service on the MOHRE app or website. Reports are accepted from members of the public, not only from the workers affected.

If the overtime is worked and not paid

Unpaid overtime is unpaid wages, and it travels the same free route as any other.

1. Get the hours into writing first. Overtime disputes are lost on evidence far more often than on law. Keep your own dated record of start and finish times, and any written instruction to stay late — an email or a message asking you to work the extra hours is worth more than a memory of it.
2. Check the arithmetic before you complain. Work out the hourly basic rate, apply 1.25, or 1.5 for hours between 10 pm and 4 am, and compare to what was actually paid. A specific figure moves a complaint along faster than "they owe me overtime".
3. File the MOHRE complaint — free, through the app or 80060. The process, the AED 50,000 threshold, the referral to court and the deadline that ends late claims are set out in when the final payment doesn't arrive.
4. If wages generally have stopped, rather than just the overtime, the WPS penalty ladder is the faster lever — see your salary is late.
5. Do not let it run to the end of employment. Overtime owed is part of what you are settling; add it to gratuity and untaken leave before signing a full-and-final, which otherwise closes off the difference.

Persistent, uncompensated overtime beyond the statutory caps is also a breach of the employer's obligations under the Decree-Law, which is the doorway to Article 45(1) — quitting without notice while keeping your end-of-service rights, provided the Ministry is notified fourteen working days in advance and the employer fails to rectify. That is a serious step with conditions attached; read notice, resignation and dismissal before taking it.