Firm ordered to pay sacked Emirati worker Dh400,000

Court rules Emirati was exempt from 'arbitrary dismissal' after being sacked when he claimed he was mistreated by his company.

ABU DHABI // A company was ordered by the Federal Supreme Court to reverse its dismissal of an employee and pay him Dh400,000 because, as an Emirati, he is exempt from "arbitrary" dismissal, according to a document released this week. The worker, identified as SOS, was dismissed in June 2005 from a public company, where he had worked as "special missions staff" since 1979. He filed a lawsuit in 2007 claiming he was mistreated by the company for several years and was fired arbitrarily.

The court withheld the name of the company and its stated reason for sacking SOS, who is from Abu Dhabi. SOS demanded in his lawsuit that the company also promote him by one grade retroactively from the beginning of 2003, therefore requiring it to pay Dh350,000 in education allowance for his children plus a Dh240,000 annual bonus for the two years. The Abu Dhabi Court of First Instance rejected his demands. He appealed, but the Abu Dhabi Federal Appellate Court ruled in February that although the sacking was illegitimate and the company should pay him Dh400,000 in damages, other compensation was not warranted.

"The court rules that the illegitimate dismissal of the appellant from his job has caused him moral distress and financial damages and therefore should be compensated with a total amount of Dh400,000," the court said. The court said that because the company was a semi-governmental entity, general government policies on honing the skills of UAE nationals should apply to Emirati employees, not ordinary labour law, regardless of the contract between the company and its employees.

"The company is a mixture of public and private," the court said. "When it comes to Emirati employees, the government side of the company applies to them because in order to maintain them in the workplace and improve the skills of future generations, they should be treated within a legal framework that is different from that of the labour law." The court said the right to dismiss an employee "arbitrarily" and compensate him by paying his basic salary for a few months applies to private companies only. A law passed last year mandates that companies of any type may sack Emiratis for serious misconduct only, such as arriving to work under the influence of alcohol, stealing from the company or forging identity documents.

The announcement was a response to concerns that private-sector companies could lay off staff because of the global economic downturn. "If it is a private company, then it is easier for them to fire him," said Dr Ahmed Abdul Zaher, a legal consultant at the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department. "If the company is fully government-owned, it is very difficult to fire nationals. As for semi-government companies, the Government would be treated in court as any other individual."

The dismissal of a UAE national must be approved by the Ministry of Labour and ordinarily go through a long process that involves a special committee that investigates the causes of the employer's decision. According to official statistics, the number of Emiratis in the private sector ranges from 12,000 to 40,000 out of a population of about four million. @Email:[e-mail]