Calculation of Overtime based on the basis of the monthly salary

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First of all I would like to thank you for your awesome work on answering our legal questions. The reason for this mail is that I also have a legal question for you — regarding overtime. I would like to know if someone has a salary of KD 344 and he’s doing overtime on weekends, how should we calculate his overtime pay on the basis of the monthly salary?

Name withheld
Answer: To answer this question correctly we need to have a close look at Article 67 of the Kuwait Labor Law so as to leave no room for doubt because, besides the additional payment, you are supposed to get an additional day off instead of the one on which you worked.

People just talk of giving an additional 1.5 days salary (it used to be 1.25 before the current labor law) to employees working on weekends.

But where does this figure come from.

Just read on. Article 67 says “The worker shall be entitled to a paid weekend which is equal to 24 continuous hours after every six working days. The employer may call the worker for work during his weekend if the necessity arises. The worker shall be entitled to at least 50 per cent of his remuneration, in addition to his original remuneration and to another day off instead of one on which he worked. The above paragraph doesn’t affect the calculation of the worker’s rights, including his daily remuneration and his leaves. The right is calculated by dividing his remuneration by the actual working days, without including the weekends although these weekends are paid”.

Now, this is where the correct interpretation is needed.

Some of the people who don’t understand the first paragraph of this article will end up giving various erroneous interpretations but here is the correct one.

The employer is required to give only at least an additional 50 per cent of the daily remuneration (after dividing the monthly remuneration by 26) provided he gives an additional day off in lieu of the weekend on which the employee worked.

But what happens if the employer doesn’t want to give an additional off day. In this case, the employer will be required to make an additional one day’s salary to the employee.

This is the route taken by most of the big and good companies and they end up paying an additional one and a half days remuneration to the employee for making him work on his off day.

Now, taking the salary that you have quoted, the working for over time will be as follows:

Total monthly remuneration = KD 344

Therefore the daily remuneration = 344 / 26 = KD 13.230

So, if the employer gives an additional day off he only has to pay an additional KD 6.615 (at least) to the employee.

But if he doesn’t give the additional day off — as is the case with most of the companies — the employer has to pay an extra KD 19.845 to the employee for making him work on the weekend.

But a lot of companies are indulging in the wrong practice of just dividing the monthly salary by the number of days in that month and paying the resultant amount as overtime.

This is only a totally wrong practice, it is also a violation of the Kuwait Labor Law for which a company can be taken to court.

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