“Stay late tonight” and “put off your leave”: the limits on what an employer can ask
Two requests that private-sector workers hear often are “we need you tonight after hours” and “not now, push your leave until after the busy season”. Neither is banned outright and neither is allowed without limit. On this page the Law Office of Ali Barakat in Baghdad, al-Yarmouk, sets out what Labour Law No. 37 of 2015 says about each, and then adds sick leave and personal leave, because in practice they get mixed up with both.
Request one: “stay late tonight”
Where does the ordinary day stop? At eight hours a day or forty-eight a week, with specific exceptions (art. 67, first paragraph). Where work is done in two shifts or intermittently, the worker may not be kept at the workplace for more than ten hours, and actual work may not exceed eight (art. 67, second paragraph). Some groups sit outside this rule, among them a business where only the owner’s family members work, people in supervisory and management posts, guards and agricultural workers (art. 67, fourth paragraph).
Breaks within the day. One or more breaks totalling between half an hour and an hour must interrupt the working day, with no stretch of more than five hours in a row, and every worker gets at least eleven consecutive hours off between two working days (art. 68). Drivers may not be kept at the wheel for more than four hours without a rest.
When may the limit be exceeded? Through three doors only:
- An emergency: an accident that has happened or is feared, urgent repair of machines and equipment, or force majeure, and only as far as needed to stop the ordinary work from halting (art. 71, first paragraph, item a).
- Continuous shift work: where the nature of the work requires it to run without a break in successive shifts, provided the week does not exceed fifty-six hours and the worker gets a day off in compensation (art. 71, first paragraph, item b).
- A regulated exception: an agreement between workers’ and employers’ organisations for a fixed period, keeping the weekly average at forty-eight hours, or a permanent or temporary exception granted by the Ministry after consulting the organisations, for example the pressure of holidays and seasons, machine maintenance, the annual stock-take, or preventing goods from spoiling (art. 71, second and third paragraphs).
What are the ceilings? Overtime may not exceed one hour a day in industrial work run on rotation, nor four hours a day in preparatory and complementary work and in non-industrial work. No worker may be given more than forty hours of overtime in ninety days, or more than one hundred and twenty hours in a year (art. 71, fifth paragraph). Drivers have their own ceiling on total driving time.
At what rate? Overtime pay must be at least fifty per cent above ordinary pay for daytime work, and not less than double ordinary pay for night work or for hazardous, strenuous or harmful work, and a worker who gave up his weekly day off is owed another day off in its place (art. 71, fourth paragraph).
Who cannot be required at all? A pregnant or nursing woman may not be forced into overtime, or into tasks that the health authority judges a risk to her or the child (art. 85).
An example: a shop asks its staff to stay three extra hours a day throughout Ramadan. That may fall under seasonal pressure of work, but it depends on an exception from the Ministry, stays within the ceiling of forty hours in ninety days, and is paid at the set rate. “Always stay until the work is done”, with no limit and no extra pay, has no basis in the text.
Request two: “put off your leave”
How much is the worker owed? After completing a year of service, paid leave of not less than twenty-one days for each year, and at least thirty days in hazardous, strenuous or harmful work (art. 75, first and second paragraphs). The balance grows with length of service with the same employer: two days for the first five years, two for the next five, then three days for every five years after that (art. 75, third paragraph). Part of a year earns leave in proportion, and enforced absences such as illness, injury, accidents and childbirth count as service for leave purposes.
At what pay? Not less than the average the worker earned over the last six months, leaving out transport, meal and hazard allowances, and it is paid before the leave starts (art. 76).
Who sets the dates? The business’s internal work rules; if they say nothing, the worker and the employer agree (art. 78, first paragraph). Leave may be split where the needs of the work or the worker’s interest call for it, provided one part is at least fourteen consecutive days and the rest is taken by agreement within the following year (art. 77). So a request to postpone is possible within that framework, but it cannot reach the point of denying the leave, because the employer must allow the worker to take it (art. 78, second paragraph).
Can leave be sold? No. A deal under which the worker surrenders his minimum paid leave, or swaps it for cash or any other benefit, has no legal effect (art. 79, second paragraph). The worker may not take paid work elsewhere during his leave (art. 79, first paragraph). When the contract ends, days not taken are paid in cash on the basis of the last wage (art. 76, fourth paragraph).
An example: a worker has spent seven years with the same company in non-hazardous work. His basic balance is twenty-one days, plus two days for the first five years, making twenty-three, and it rises again once he completes the second five years.
Official holidays and public feast days that fall during leave are not deducted from it (art. 74, third paragraph). Details are on the page on official holidays.
What we ask for in an hours-and-leave file
When a dispute of this kind reaches us, we start with three documents: the attendance record, or whatever stands in for it such as messages and shift rotas; payslips showing whether overtime was paid at the set rate; and the internal work rules, if any, because they fix leave dates. On the employer’s side, we check that a Ministry exception exists where extra hours went beyond the ordinary limits for seasonal reasons, and that each worker’s leave balance is calculated and known to him. Those papers settle the dispute before any argument does.
Sick leave and personal leave
A worker has thirty days of sick leave a year on full pay paid by the employer, and unused days carry forward to a ceiling of 180 (art. 80). If an insured worker’s illness continues after the balance is used up, the provisions of the Workers’ Pension and Social Security Law apply. Sick leave is granted on a report from the medical body the employer relies on or from an official medical body, and the period counts as actual service (art. 81).
Paid personal leave includes five days for the worker’s own marriage, a single day when a son or daughter marries, and five days on the death of one of the relatives the text lists. An insured woman worker whose husband dies has paid mourning-period leave. Hajj leave is unpaid and granted once during the worker’s service (art. 82).
Where the dispute is about unpaid overtime, the routes for claiming are on the page on delayed wages and remedies, and the employer’s duties as a whole are on the page on the employer’s legal obligations.
Legal basis and sources
Frequently asked questions
Can I refuse overtime?
Outside the situations in article 71, and outside agreement where the text requires it, such as work on a rest day (art. 70, third paragraph), overtime is not imposed by the employer’s will alone.
My employer turns down my leave every time. What can I do?
The Law obliges the employer to let you take it. The dates may be arranged or split under article 77, but refusing leave altogether is a breach that can be taken to labour inspection or to the Labour Court.
They offered to pay me for my leave so I keep working. Is that valid?
Not while the contract is running. An agreement to trade the minimum leave for money is void, and cash in place of leave is only due for days left over when the contract ends.
Related topics and articles
- 01An employer’s duties to staff in Iraq, arranged by when they fall dueA timeline of the private-sector employer’s legal duties in Iraq: before hiring, on every payday, every working day, every year, and when the job ends, with the articles behind each.
- 02When wages arrive late: the calendar the Labour Law sets and the path to recover themThe calendar for paying wages under articles 53 and 60 of Labour Law No. 37 of 2015, the rule that a waiver of wages due is void, and how a wage claim moves to the department and the Court of Labor.
- 03What does the Labour Law require of workplace internal rules? A statutory readingWhat Labour Law 37/2015 requires of workplace internal rules: the content in article 136, and posting under article 107, not the filing steps.
- 04End-of-service entitlements under Labour Law No. 37 of 2015The end-of-service gratuity under Labour Law 37/2015: the two-week formula, the statutory exceptions, and how it differs from benefits under Law 18/2023.
- 05Which labour and social-security rules apply in the governorates and in the Kurdistan Region?The reach of Labour Law 37/2015 and Law 18/2023 in the governorates not organised in a region, and how work is organised in the Kurdistan Region.