Employment Contract Practices in UAE: Key Issues and Implications

Abstract

In the recent past years the number of people working in different countries has increased dramatically. In Pakistan it’s a trend of moving to different countries to get better employment opportunities. For employment Hong Kong, Singapore, UAE, and Saudi Arabia are considered as the favorable countries for the Pakistanis. Despite the fact, these countries don’t offer favorable and secured working environment to the immigrants, but still people prefer to go there for better earnings. Employment issues such as low wage rate, preference to residents, absence of contractual nexus, and sexual abuse etc. are common. This study aims to identify the major gaps in the implementation of laws regarding immigrant work force and the conditions of immigrants working in these countries. The study is qualitative and the respondents are those who have work experience of minimum three years. The results of this study shows that employers hardly follow labor laws for the immigrant work force, where as some countries have a clear policy which is enforced by their government. There is a dire need to do legislation regarding the rights of immigrant workforce and its implementation.

Keywords: Employment contract, UAE, Immigrant, Labor Laws