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An introduction to labor law

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Helwan University
Faculty of law
Social law.

An introduction to
labor law

Prepared

by

Dr. Ola Farouk Azzam

Faculty of law-Helwan University.
 Dr. Ola Farouk Azzam ‫ ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ‬An introduction to
Labor law

Introduction
The private law, deals with the relationships
between individuals, both all of them, in a society;
it organizes the settle private disputes.

Thus, we can say that the private law

controls, as basic, contracts, property ownership,
the rights and the obligations of the privet
individuals and family members, trades, and
compensation of damage, etc. the private law
organizes any relation between individuals, which
we can call it with civil relationship.

Labor law:
Generally, the labor law regulates the
relationship entre the employer and the employee,
and all subjects which connection with this
relationship. En this case, the Egyptian labor
market is regulated by the new unified labor law

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Labor law

no.12 for 2003, this law comprises (257) articles,

that address all the legal aspects regulating the
Egyptian labor market.

 The contain of labor law:

The labor law includes the obligations and the
rights of an employer and the employee, also it
organizes the employer's right to fire his
employee, the conditions of work and the granites
of the employee en case end the employment
contract, especially when end of employer to this
contract. Also, the labor law included the clauses
of Non-discrimination, conclusion of employment
contract training of women and eligible children.
The law also created a national council to discuss
the policy of wages and a national minimum
wage.
In addition, the labor law organizes the
employer's authority which known with the

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Labor law

employer's authority to administrate his enterprise

and organizing the work of it, also, his authority
to control of his employees.
More ever, an employment contacts are
required to be in writing, in triplicate in Arabic
language. The employers is the responsible of
write the contract, then he keeps one copy, the
employee and social insurance office keep the
other copies. The employment contract must be
include certain information as specified in the
labor law.
As a general rule, employers can freely
determine the person they would like to hire as an
employee. This has been recognized as a special
freedom under the labor law. Under which it is
relatively difficult to terminate an employee's
contract once the employee has been hired. There
are certain limited exceptions to this right, such as

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Labor law

the requirement that men and women are given

equal opportunities, the requirement that a certain
percentage of hires are persons with disabilities
and children.
 The social law:

In principle, the social law is divided into

labor law, social assurance or security law,
cooperative law and a syndical law. En effect, the
social law includes any law which relative with
protection of workers, women, disabilities and
children, as the children law and the most famous
of these laws is labor law, which anyone defines it
because it organizes the relationship between the
employee and his employer.

 The employment contract:

We can say that the contract to become
employment contract require in connection with

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Labor law

it. So, the employment contract should include the

following:
 The name of the employer and employee,
 The address of the workplace,
 The address of employee and his
occupation,
 The name of the employee's function, etc.
 Offer of employment:
The labor law requires an employer to specify
clearly the terms and conditions of employment
upon or before entering into an employment
contract. The law requires certain important terms
and conditions to be specified in writing. At most
of the terms and conditions of employment will
usually be stipulated in the employer's "work
rules".
Thus, the employee should present certain
documents which required proving his identity
and his social insurance number. These

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Labor law

documents are required during create the

employment contract. Also, the employment
contract may be drawn up for a fixed-term or
indefinite period of time, when the two parties of
employment contract agree for a period of time,
the contract will be fixed-term. And, when the
two parties don’t fix a period, the contract in this
case will be the contract for an indefinite term.

 Work rules (conditions of employment):

According the labor law, the employer must

be established the rules and conditions of
employment, which cover matters such as:

 Working hours and breaks,

 Holidays,
 Wages (monthly salary, bonuses, retirement
allowance etc.),
 Termination of employment,

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Labor law

 Disciplinary actions, and

 Other matters that apply generally to all
employees at the workplace.
The terms and conditions stipulated in the
work rules are "reasonable" and the employees
have been informed of the contents of work rules.
The terms and conditions stipulated in the work
rules will form the terms and conditions of
employment for all employees who are subject to
the work rules. In addition, all employers who
continuously employ 50 or more employees at a
workplace must:
 Establish work rules,
 File the work rules with the relevant labor
standards inspection office with the written
opinion from the labor union or employee
representative, and

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Labor law

 Inform the employees of the contents of the

work rules.

 Amending the work rules:

An employer can unilaterally amend the

terms and conditions of employment of all the
employees in a workplace by amending the
applicable work rules. An amendment to the work
rules will be binding on all employees if it is
favorable to them or if it is unfavorable, it is
regarded as reasonable.

So, there are many steps that an employer can

consider when making an amendment, as: how
detrimental the amendment would be to the
employees, the extent to which it was necessary
for the employer to make the amendment, and the
negotiation of the amended terms and conditions.

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Labor law

 Wages:
General principles regarding the payment of
wages: so, the wages of employees must be:

- Paid in Egyptian pound in cash,

- Paid directly to each employee,

- Paid in full to the employee.

- Paid at least once a month on a specified date.

 The workers' rights:

There are many rights concerning with the

workers, as; a right of association, there is a union
local or workers committee which can be formed
if 50 employees express a desire to organize, all
the workers have a right to join to any association
and unions. Also, the workers have a right to
conclude the collective conventions, the right of

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Labor law

employees to strike and the right to work under

conditions safety and healthy… etc.

- The minimum Age for employment of

children:

The labor law No.12 for 2003 determines the

age of work for the children with 14 year and can
be training with 12 years. And the children must
work for six hours a day, not after 7 p.m and not
in dangerous activities or activities requiring
heavy work.
However, the minimum age in labor law is
determined with 14; the child law was raised this
age to become 15 years for working and 13 years
for training, to protect the child and lets him to
complete his education in basic stage.

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Labor law

- Working hours:
The general principle is that the employers
cannot require employees to work for more than
eight hours per day and 40 hours per week.
Employers must provide employees a n hour per
day, the employer must also provide employees at
least one rest day per week.

- The official leaves:

En effects, the official leaves which are fully

paid, are as follows:
 The 1st day of Moharam (Islamic new
year),
 The 12th day of Rabie the first (prophet
Mohamed's birthday),
 The 1st and 2nd days of Shawal (1st
Barium),
 The 9th and 10th and 11th days of Zoelhga
(2nd Barium),

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Labor law

 The 7th day of January ( Eastern

Christmas),
 Spring day ( Sham El Nessim),
 The 25th of April ( Sinai Liberation Day),
 The 1st of May (labor Day),
 The 23rd of July (Revolution Day),
 The 6th of October (Armed Forces Day),
 The 25th of January (Revolution Day),
 The 30 of July (Revolution Day).
 The maternity and child care leave:

En effect, the female having spent "10

months" in the service of an employer shall be
entitled to a maternity leave of go days with full
wage payment, including the period preceding
giving birth.
Moreover, the female having a period of rest
daily "60 minute" on day, during the "24 months"
which following the date of childbirth, for breast-

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Labor law

feeding her child. In addition, the woman has the

right to take a leave for child care for maximum
"24 months" during the childhood of her children.

 Termination of employment
contract:
There are many ways which can the
employment contract ended with it, as:
 Resignation:
It is customary for employers to stipulate in
work rules that employees must give 30 day
notice of resignation. Any notice period that is
longer than this is likely to be held invalid unless
the employer can demonstrate that it has a
genuine business need or require such a longer
notice period.
 Retirement:
It is common for employers to stipulate a
retirement age in the work rules. Under the law it

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Labor law

is prohibited to set the retirement age at less than

60 years of age. Also, if the retirement age is set
at less than 65 years of age, the law requires
employers to establish a system to re-employ
employees who wish to work past the retirement
age until they reach 65 years of age.

 Dismissal:
According to the labor law, although the
general rule is that employers have a right to
dismiss employees, a dismissal will be regarded
as an abuse of rights and thus invalid if the
dismissal lacks "reasonable" grounds and is not
socially acceptable.

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Labor law

References
***************
 Dr.Ola Farouk Azzam:
- Introduction to Social Legislation, Part I, Explanation
of the Labor Code, Disabled Persons, Child, 2019.
- Labor Law, 2019.
- Introduction to Law, Faculty of Law, Helwan
University, 2012.
 Dr. Ahmed M. Rifaat: An introduction to legal
English, 2001-2002.
 Asif Tufal: Introduction t contract law, N.p, N.d.
 Catherine Elliot and France Quinn: contract Law,
fourth edition, Longman, New York, 2003.
 Dr. El Sayyed El Araby Hassan: An introduction to
Modern legal systems, 2007.
 Dr. Fatma Mohamed El Razaz: Lessons on Legal
Terminology, N.D.
 Gerhard Robbers: An Introduction to German Law,
fifth edition, University of Trier, German, Spring 2012.
 Hames and Ekern, Prentice Hall: Introduction to
Law, Second Edition, prentice hall publisher, U.S.A, 2002.
 J.G. Holland: Introduction to law, chapter 2, Jones&
Bartlett Learning, LLC. 2008.
 Johnson v. Florida: Introduction to the Law, Part
One, Law, Legal Reasoning, and the Legal Profession, 1992.
 Roscoe Pound: An Introduction to the Philosophy of

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 Dr. Ola Farouk Azzam ‫ ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ‬An introduction to
Labor law

Law, Harvard Law School, October 25, 1921.

 Roudou kijun kantoku-sho: Introduction to
employment law in Japan, freshfields Brukhaus Dernger,
October 2010.
Website references:
http://www.kent.ac.uk/lawlinks,
http://www.legalabbrevs.cardiff.ac.uk,
http://www.venables.co.uk,
http://www.venables.co.uk/students.htm,
http://www.infolaw.co.uk.
http://www.munseys.com.
http://www.nomos-shop.de/15253.

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