Official Rest Day and Holiday... A Legal Study

The Ministry of Education mandated that teachers conduct remote classes online only on the previous Saturday, for a duration of one hour as a trial.

Rest day is the weekly designated period of time to which an employee is entitled, allowing them to cease their job duties with full pay after the exertion of workdays, and to prepare for the following day.

In addition to some teachers’ commitment to teaching their own children and attending to their personal affairs, assigning them to work outside official working hours would add psychological and physical fatigue, rather than providing the required rest.

Therefore, such a decision is only taken out of urgent and temporary necessity, and even if it lasts for just one day, the Ministry and other entities may resort to assigning their employees to work on their rest day.

If some argue that there is a difference between vacation days and rest days, it lies in the consequences associated with each, specifically that rest days are not counted toward vacation leave or social insurance accruals. Otherwise, they are equal in that both involve unpaid non-working time.

This is not affected by the provision in Article 24/2 of the Civil Service Law, which permits assigning employees to work outside official working hours, as work outside regular hours is governed by decisions of the Civil Service Board and must be compensated financially, in accordance with the principle of “pay for work,” which is the established practice.

The Egyptian Supreme Administrative Court has ruled: “...if a worker-employee is employed on those days (holidays), it must be in exchange for double pay, which encompasses what the worker receives in terms of salary and its accessories, such as incentives, allowances, and additional wages, all of which apply if no extra days off are granted for those holidays during which the worker performed duties.”

(Cassation Appeal No. 38681 of 2017, Supreme Court Session on 19/2/2017, published in the compilation by Advisor Mohammed Ahmed Abdelhamid – Commentary on the Kuwaiti Civil Service Law).

We further add that the current trend among countries is to increase the number of rest days for employees or workers, not to reduce them.

We conclude that the decision to assign public school teachers to work on Saturday, even if temporary, may cause anxiety for them, as well as for employees and students alike, particularly if government entities adopt this approach.

If there is an intention by the Ministry or other government entities to implement this decision in the future, compensatory relief for both material and moral damages is mandatory, as it constitutes work outside official working hours (overtime), in accordance with the principle of “pay for work” and established judicial precedents.

PhD in Law, University of Edinburgh