Dismissal without notice in the UAE: the ten grounds in Article 44, the written investigation that has to come first, and why 'arbitrary dismissal' is not a claim under this law

Legal information, not legal advice. Mohamy.ai is not a law firm and is not licensed to practise law or to provide legal consultancy in the UAE, Saudi Arabia or Egypt. This page describes the law of the United Arab Emirates in general terms as it stood on 21 August 2026. It is not advice about your situation. If you have been dismissed, or an investigation has been opened, some of the periods on this page are counted in days. Consult a lawyer licensed in the UAE.

An employer may dismiss you without notice only in one of the ten cases listed in Article 44 of Federal Decree-Law No. (33) of 2021, and only after conducting a written investigation with you. The dismissal decision itself must be in writing, must be justified, and must be handed over to the worker by the employer or its representative. Those procedural requirements are in the opening words of the article, not in a separate provision, so a summary dismissal with no written investigation and no reasoned written decision has not followed the article that permits it.

And here is the point that surprises almost everyone. Article 39(1)(g) lists termination of service among the disciplinary penalties an employer may impose, and it does so in these words: "Termination of service while preserving the worker's right of end of service benefits." So a disciplinary termination does not, of itself, take away your end of service benefit.

And this is not an artefact of the translation, because we checked the Arabic. The word تعسف, arbitrariness, appears zero times in all 74 articles of the Arabic of the Decree-Law, and so do استقالة and الاستقالة, resignation. The end of service benefit is a different matter entirely: it is in the statute under its own name, مكافأة نهاية الخدمة, fifteen times, and Article 51 is headed with it. What does not exist is a forfeiture provision.

And one term to stop using. "Arbitrary dismissal" is not a claim under this law. The word "arbitrary" appears zero times in the Decree-Law and zero times in the Cabinet Resolution. It was a concept of the repealed Federal Law No. (8) of 1980, which is why it is still everywhere online and why a general-purpose AI will offer it to you. What exists instead is Article 47, "Illegitimate Termination", and it is far narrower than the phrase implies and capped at three months' wage. Section 5.

Scope, stated once. UAE federal onshore private sector. Not the DIFC. Not the ADGM.

1. The ten grounds, quoted in full

Article 44, verbatim from MOHRE's own English, including its opening conditions:

The employer may dismiss the worker without notice after conducting a written investigation with him and the dismissal decision shall be in writing and justified and the employer or its representative shall hand it over to the worker in any of the following cases: 1. It is proven that the worker impersonated another person, or submitted forged certificates or documents. 2. The worker committed a mistake that resulted in gross physical losses to the employer or he deliberately damaged the properties of the employer and he acknowledged the same, provided that the latter informs the Ministry of the incident within (7) seven working days from the date of being aware of the occurrence of the incident. 3. The worker violated the instructions of the establishment's by-law related to the safety of work and workers or the workplace, provided that they are written and hung in a visible place and the worker is informed of the same. 4. The worker did not perform his basic duties according to the employment contract and he continued breaching them despite conducting a written investigation with him for this reason and he is notified and warned of dismissal twice if this is repeated. 5. The worker disclosed one work secret related to industrial or intellectual property, which resulted in losses to the employer, missed opportunity or achieving a personal benefit for the worker. 6. The worker is drunk during working hours, is under the influence of narcotics or psychotropic substances, or commits an action breaching the public morals at the workplace. 7. The worker assaults during work, the employer, manager in charge, one of his superiors or colleagues at work, by word, action or any form of assault that is punishable under the legislation in force in the State. 8. The worker is absent without a legitimate reason or excuse accepted by the employer for more than (20) twenty intermittent days during one year or more than (7) seven consecutive days. 9. The worker exploited his position in an illegal way to obtain personal results and gains. 10. The worker joins another establishment without abiding by the rules and procedures prescribed in this regard.

Three procedural conditions are in the opening sentence and they apply to every one of the ten:

And four of the ten grounds carry their own additional condition, which is where cases turn:

• Ground 2 requires the employer to inform the Ministry of the incident within seven working days of becoming aware of it. It also requires, on the face of the text, that the worker acknowledged the deliberate damage. So an employer relying on ground 2 weeks later with no notification to the Ministry has not met the condition as written.
• Ground 3 requires the safety instructions to be written, hung in a visible place, and the worker informed of them. Three elements, and losing one loses the ground.
• Ground 4 requires a written investigation for the non-performance, and that the worker be notified and warned of dismissal twice if it is repeated. That is a two-warning ground, not a one-strike ground.
• Ground 8 has two thresholds and both are "more than": more than 20 intermittent days in one year, or more than 7 consecutive days. Exactly 20 or exactly 7 is not more than 20 or 7 on the face of the text. And the absence must be without a legitimate reason or excuse accepted by the employer.

Ground 6 is worth reading precisely too. It covers being drunk during working hours, being under the influence of narcotics or psychotropic substances, or committing an act breaching public morals at the workplace. Each limb is bounded either in time or in place.

2. The procedure that has to happen first

Article 44 requires a written investigation. Cabinet Resolution No. (1) of 2022 Article 24 says what one has to contain, and it applies to the penalties in Article 39, which include termination of service:

3. None of the penalties set out in Article (39) of the Decree-Law may be imposed on the worker except after informing them in writing of the charges against them, hearing their statements, investigating his defence and recording the foregoing in a report to be deposited in their private file and annotated with the penalty at its end. The worker shall be notified in writing of the penalties imposed thereon, the type and amount thereof, the grounds for their imposition and the penalty they will face in case of recurrence. 4. The worker may not be accused of a disciplinary violation that was detected more than (30) thirty days ago, and no disciplinary sanction may be imposed more than (60) days after the date of completing the investigation of the violation and establishing it against the worker. 5. Without prejudice to the worker's right to file a labour complaint, they shall have the right to file a grievance claim with the management of the establishment against any penalty imposed against them. The grievance claim against the penalty shall be filed with the management of the establishment and the worker shall not be harmed by filing it. The employer shall notify the worker of the outcome of their grievance. 6. Subject to Article (14) of this Resolution, every employer who employs (50) or more workers shall put in a visible place, or make available through any other appropriate mechanism, a system for complaints and grievance claims accessible to the workers.

Two deadlines that run against the employer, from clause 4:

• 30 days. The worker may not be accused of a disciplinary violation that was detected more than thirty days ago.
• 60 days. No disciplinary sanction may be imposed more than sixty days after the investigation was completed and the violation established.

So the dates matter as much as the facts. Write down, today, when the violation is said to have been detected, when the investigation started and finished, and when you were notified. Those are the dates clause 4 measures.

And the notification has four required contents, from clause 3: you must be notified in writing of the penalty, its type and amount, the grounds for its imposition, and the penalty you will face on recurrence. A one-line letter saying you are terminated does not contain those four things.

Clause 5 gives you an internal route that costs nothing: a grievance to the management of the establishment, without prejudice to your right to file a labour complaint, and you may not be harmed by filing it. The employer must notify you of the outcome. If your employer has 50 or more workers, clause 6 requires a published complaints and grievance system.

And Article 24(1) sets the proportionality criteria the employer must weigh, including the financial impact of the violation, its effect on health and safety, the abuse of any power vested in the worker, the rate of recurrence, and whether there is a penal or moral side to it. A penalty of dismissal for a first, minor, low-impact violation sits badly against that list.

One limit worth knowing. Article 41: no disciplinary sanction may be imposed for an act committed outside the workplace unless it is related to work, and more than one disciplinary sanction may not be imposed for a single violation.

3. Suspension while it is investigated, and what happens to your pay

Article 40:

1. The employer may suspend the worker temporarily from work for a period not exceeding (30) thirty days, in order to conduct a disciplinary investigation with him if the investigation interest so requires, along with suspending half the wage during the suspension period. If the investigation concluded keeping the case, non-violation or punishment of the worker by warning, the worker shall be paid the wage that was suspended during the suspension period. 2. The employer may temporarily suspend the worker from work when he is accused of committing a crime of assault on oneself, money, or crimes related to breach of honour or trust, until a final judgment is issued by the competent judicial authority. His wage shall be suspended for the suspension period. If a judgment is issued for not putting the worker into trial, he was acquitted for absence of felony or the investigation concluded keeping the case due to lack of evidence, he shall be returned to work, along with paying his full suspended wage.

Two things to take from that table. The disciplinary suspension is capped at thirty days and costs you half your wage, refundable on three defined outcomes. The criminal suspension has no cap, because it runs to a final judgment, and costs the whole wage, also refundable on three defined outcomes. The list of qualifying accusations in clause 2 is closed on its face: assault on oneself, on money, or crimes related to breach of honour or trust.

4. What you are still owed after an Article 44 dismissal

This is the section that changes the answer people expect.

Your end of service benefit is not forfeited. Article 39(1) lists the penalties an employer may impose, ending with:

g. Termination of service while preserving the worker's right of end of service benefits.

So the Decree-Law's own list of disciplinary penalties preserves the benefit expressly. And Article 51(2) computes it on the basic wage, at 21 days for each of the first five years and 30 days for each year beyond, with no reduction anywhere in the article for the reason the service ended, and Article 51(6) caps the benefit in its entirety at two years' wage, which on these rates first bites at about twenty-five and a half years of service.

And one limit on who this formula belongs to. Article 51(2) is the rule for the full-time foreign worker. If you are a UAE national, Article 51(1) puts you under the pensions and social-insurance legislation instead, and the 21 and 30 day formula is not your entitlement.

Worked example. Dismissed under Article 44 after 7 years. Monthly total wage AED 20,000, of which the contract states AED 10,000 is basic.

• First five years, Article 51(2)(a): 5 x 21 = 105 days.
• Years 6 and 7, Article 51(2)(b): 2 x 30 = 60 days.
• Total: 165 days of basic wage, which is 165 / 30 = 5.5 months of basic wage.
• Daily basic wage on the Article 67 thirty-day month: 10,000 / 30 = AED 333.333...
• 165 x 333.333... = AED 55,000.00.
• The same 165 days computed wrongly on the total wage would give AED 110,000. Exactly double, because basic is exactly half of total. The gratuity is on the basic wage. The notice allowance under Article 43(4) is on the last wage. Two different bases, and mixing them is the commonest arithmetic error in this area.

What you do not get, and why. A dismissal under Article 44 is a dismissal without notice, so there is no notice period and no notice period allowance under Article 43(3). That is the point of the article.

But note Article 51(7) and Cabinet Resolution Article 29. The employer may deduct from the end of service benefit amounts due under the law or a judgment, and the Resolution lists the cases and adds two controls: the employer must have followed the procedures in the Decree-Law and the Resolution where the deduction relates to violations or damage caused by the worker's fault, and not more than three months shall have lapsed from the due date of those amounts unless otherwise agreed. So a deduction against your gratuity is not open-ended.

And Article 53 gives you the deadline. The employer shall pay the wages and all other entitlements within 14 days from the end date of the contract term.

5. "Arbitrary dismissal", and what Article 47 actually says

The concept does not exist in this law. The word "arbitrary" appears zero times in MOHRE's English of both instruments, and, which matters more, تعسف, arbitrariness, appears zero times in all 74 articles of the Arabic of the Decree-Law, the language the law was enacted in. There is no general unfair-dismissal remedy in current UAE onshore employment law. The concept belongs to the repealed Federal Law No. (8) of 1980, and it persists online because fourteen years of content was written under that law and because language models trained on that content reach for it.

What exists is Article 47:

1. The termination of the worker's service by the employer is unlawful if the termination of the worker's service is due to filing a serious complaint to the Ministry or filing a lawsuit against the employer, whose validity is proven. 2. The employer shall pay fair compensation to the worker estimated by the competent court if it is proven that the termination is unlawful according to Clause (1) of this Article. The amount of compensation shall be defined by taking into account the work type and the amount of damage caused to the worker and his service term. It is required in all cases that the amount of compensation does not exceed the worker's wage for a period of (3) three months, calculated according to the last wage he was obtaining. 3. The provisions of Clause (2) of this Article shall not prejudice the right of the worker to obtain a notice period allowance and end of service benefits payable to him, in accordance with the provisions hereof.

Read clause 1 narrowly, because that is how it is written. A termination is unlawful under Article 47 only where it is because the worker filed a serious complaint with the Ministry or filed a lawsuit against the employer whose validity is proven. It is a retaliation provision. It is not a remedy for being dismissed unfairly, harshly, or for a reason you consider unjust.

And the ceiling is hard: three months' wage, on the last wage, with the actual figure at the court's discretion within that cap on the factors in clause 2.

Worked example, to show the shape of a full claim. Last monthly wage AED 12,000, monthly basic AED 7,000, 4 years of service, contractual notice 30 days, and the dismissal is found unlawful under Article 47(1).

• Article 47(2) ceiling: 3 x 12,000 = AED 36,000 maximum, at the court's discretion within it.
• Article 47(3) preserves, on top and not in place:
• Notice period allowance, Articles 43(3) and 43(4), on the last wage: 30 x (12,000 / 30) = 30 x 400.00 = AED 12,000.00.
• End of service benefit, Article 51(2)(a), four years all inside the first five, on the basic wage: 4 x 21 = 84 days, and 84 x (7,000 / 30) = 84 x 233.333... = AED 19,600.00.
• Maximum on these three heads: 36,000 + 12,000 + 19,600 = AED 67,600.00.

Note deliberately that the three heads use two different bases. Article 47(2) and Article 43(4) use the last wage. Article 51(2) uses the basic wage. Any total that uses one base for all three is wrong.

6. What this page does not tell you

• Whether your dismissal is valid. We can tell you the ten grounds, the four procedural requirements in the opening sentence, and the two deadlines in Cabinet Resolution Article 24(4). Whether your facts satisfy a ground is an opinion on your case, and it is exactly the question a licensed lawyer is for.
• The limitation period for challenging a dismissal, and the deadline to lodge a complaint with the Ministry. We withhold both deliberately. Rather than restate a period from a text we have suspended, we say we are not stating it. Separately, a ministerial resolution imposes a much shorter window for lodging a labour complaint than the period for bringing a claim, and the two are orders of magnitude apart. Ask a licensed lawyer today.
• What the establishment's list of penalties says. Cabinet Resolution Article 24(2) requires the employer to establish one clarifying each penalty in Article 39. It is a document your employer holds and we do not. Ask for a copy.
• Any case law, of which we hold none, and any ministerial resolution not named and pinned here.
• DIFC and ADGM dismissal law. Different statutes, different remedies, different clocks.

Article 54 is withheld from our corpus, and here is exactly why. The Arabic of Article 54 of the Decree-Law directs a challenge to the Ministry's decision to the competent Court of First Instance, and clause 8 of the same article agrees. MOHRE's English of clause 3 says Court of Appeal and contradicts its own clause 8. And the Arabic of Ministerial Resolution No. (782) of 2023 also says Court of Appeal. So this is not simply a translation error: two instruments in force, read in Arabic, point at different courts, and the window to act is counted in working days. We will not choose a court for you, because filing in the wrong one can cost you the claim. Take this to a lawyer licensed in the UAE, or ask the Ministry directly, and do it now.

7. What to do now, in order

1. Ask for the decision in writing, with its grounds. Article 44 requires the dismissal decision to be in writing, justified, and handed over to you. Its absence is itself evidence.
2. Ask for the written investigation. Article 44 requires one before dismissal, and Cabinet Resolution Article 24(3) requires that you were informed of the charges in writing, that your statements were heard, that your defence was investigated, and that all of it was recorded in a report deposited in your file.
3. Write down four dates today: when the violation is said to have been detected, when the investigation began, when it concluded, and when you were notified. Cabinet Resolution Article 24(4) measures 30 days and 60 days from those.
4. If the ground relied on is number 2, ask whether the Ministry was informed within seven working days. That condition is in the text and it falls on the employer.
5. If it is ground 3, ask whether the safety instructions were written, posted visibly, and communicated to you. Three elements.
6. If it is ground 4, ask for the two prior warnings. The ground requires that you were notified and warned of dismissal twice.
7. File the internal grievance. Cabinet Resolution Article 24(5): to the management of the establishment, without prejudice to your right to file a labour complaint, and you may not be harmed by filing it.
8. Expect your end of service benefit anyway, per Article 39(1)(g), and within 14 days of the end of the contract term per Article 53. Claims not exceeding AED 100,000 are exempt from judicial fees at all stages of litigation and execution under Article 55(1).

8. When to get a licensed lawyer

• You have been dismissed under Article 44. This is the clearest case on any of our pages for getting a lawyer rather than reading, because the answer turns on evidence and on dates rather than on the text.
• You are suspended. Article 40(1) costs you half your wage for up to thirty days, and Article 40(2) costs the whole wage with no cap while a criminal matter runs.
• You think you were dismissed for complaining or for suing. That is the narrow Article 47 case, and it is worth up to three months' wage plus the notice allowance and the gratuity on top.
• Your gratuity is being withheld or reduced. Article 39(1)(g) preserves it expressly, and deductions under Article 51(7) and Cabinet Resolution Article 29 are limited and procedurally conditioned.
• Any deadline may be running. This is the one thing on the page where we are declining to give you a number.

9. Before anything else: the two documents that decide this

Two documents decide an Article 44 case, and neither of them is the law: your contract, and your establishment's list of penalties required by Cabinet Resolution Article 24(2).

Mohamy.ai document analysis reads your UAE employment contract, and the establishment's penalties regulation if you have it, and sets what the dismissal decision alleges against you beside the ten grounds in Article 44 with the extra condition each of them carries, and beside the four procedural requirements in the article's opening sentence and the 30 and 60 day limits in Cabinet Resolution Article 24(4). It also shows how your contract splits basic wage from allowances, which is what determines your gratuity figure.

It does not write a grievance, a complaint or a memorandum, and it does not advise on your facts. Drafting a document for a person on their own facts is a reserved act under Federal Decree-Law No. 34 of 2022 and we neither practise nor offer it. Bring the papers, get the comparison, then take it to a licensed lawyer.

About this guide

What we are. Mohamy.ai publishes general legal information. We are not a law firm. We are not entered on the roll of lawyers and legal consultants held by the UAE Ministry of Justice under Federal Decree-Law No. 34 of 2022. We are not registered under the Saudi Code of Law Practice. We are not members of the Egyptian Bar Association under Law No. 17 of 1983. Nothing on this page is legal advice, an opinion on your case, or a prediction of any outcome. No lawyer and client relationship is created and no duty of care is owed to you.

The Arabic governs, and the English we quote is the Ministry's own. Article 66(1) of the Decree-Law makes Arabic the approved language, and Article 66(2) provides that where the Arabic text and another language differ, the Arabic text prevails. Every English quotation on this page is taken verbatim from MOHRE's own bilingual publication, which the Ministry disclaims: its standalone Cabinet Resolution PDF carries the footer "THIS is Not an official translation". So where an English word matters to your case, the Arabic is the law and the Ministry's English is not. That is not a formality, and the note on Article 54 earlier on this page sets out exactly why.

What this page does not cover. The UAE federal onshore private sector only. It does not cover the DIFC or the ADGM, which are separate common law jurisdictions with their own employment legislation, their own limitation periods and their own courts. It does not cover federal or local government employees, members of the armed forces, police and security, or domestic workers, all of whom Article 3(2) places outside the Decree-Law, domestic workers being governed by a separate instrument we do not hold. It does not cover any ministerial resolution except where one is named and pinned on the page, and it holds no case law of any kind.

How current this is. Every legal statement here was checked on 21 August 2026 against the pinned MOHRE publication, which is the consolidation including Federal Decree-Law No. 9 of 2024. The UAE Legislation portal records Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 as Active with three amendments, being Federal Decree-Law No. 14 of 2022, No. 20 of 2023 and No. 9 of 2024, and a last update of 29 July 2024.

Deadlines. Limitation periods and filing deadlines can extinguish an otherwise valid claim permanently. Do not rely on any period stated here. Confirm it with a licensed lawyer without delay. Note in particular that the deadline to lodge a labour complaint with the Ministry and the period for bringing a claim are different numbers of a different order of magnitude, and that the shorter one sits in a ministerial resolution.

Sources. Federal Decree-Law No. (33) of 2021 Regarding the Regulation of Employment Relationships and its amendments, and Cabinet Resolution No. (1) of 2022 on its Implementing Regulation, official MOHRE bilingual publication, pinned SHA-256 db64033d...1d833b6, from which 113 articles were extracted mechanically into an internal corpus. No character of the legal text was typed by a person or produced by a language model. Where the governing Arabic is quoted, it is from the UAE Legislation portal records for Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 and Cabinet Resolution No. 1 of 2022, read by our primary-source researcher.

How this was produced. Drafted with the assistance of AI and checked against the primary legislation cited above before publication. If you believe anything here is wrong or out of date, write to contact@mohamy.ai and we will correct or withdraw it.

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