Saudi Labor law suggest annual leave for every individual employee working in Saudi Arabia but in case that company is cutting employee weekend leave and counting them as annual leave than this is a violation of Saudi Labor law and have to pay fine up to SR100,000.
According to Saudi Labor Law annual leave and weekend leave is separate entity and employers/sponsors not allowed to count weekend leaves as annual or annual as weekend leaves.
Why this happened? Usually employees in Saudi Arabia didn’t have any knowledge about their labor rights in Saudi Arabia Hence employers uses their lack of knowledge as advantage and tell them that if you get weekend leaves that these leave may cut from your annual 21 days leaves.
Also both annual and weekends leaves are paid leaves in case employers also cut salary in exchange of these leaves than this is another violation of labor laws. Employer/companies violates this to get financial benefit but sometimes they want extra input from employee without even paying them more.
These fines are not final and MOL saudi Arabia may increase or decrease with scope of violation comitted by companies/employers. Also in case of late payment or not paying fines company may shut down for 30 days or the fine will be double.