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After filing a labour complaint with MOHRE, you can usually follow its progress through the same official channels you used to submit it. The MOHRE smart app and website provide services to track requests and complaints once you log in or enter your reference details, and the MOHRE call centre can give updates on your file. When you file, note your complaint or transaction reference number, your work permit details, and the contact information you registered, as you will likely need these to retrieve the status. Through these channels you can typically see whether your case is still at the amicable-settlement stage, has been scheduled for a session, or has been referred to the court. Responding promptly to any contact from MOHRE keeps your case moving and avoids unnecessary delay. If your matter has been referred to the labour court, you would then follow up through the relevant emirate's court services for hearing dates and updates. Because the exact online steps can change, check the current options on the official MOHRE portal. If you need help interpreting where your case stands, verified UAE legal professionals are available on LEXAI.

An internal policy cannot erase what the law guarantees. The starting point under the UAE Labour Law is that annual leave should be used in the year it falls due, and carrying days over or cashing them out during service is something the employer can regulate by agreement. But two things cut against a blanket forfeited-in-December rule. First, whatever happens during employment, leave you have legally accrued and not taken must be paid out when the employment ends, calculated on basic salary — a policy cannot delete that. Second, forfeiture is hard to defend where the employer itself stopped you taking leave: you did not skip your days, the company was short-staffed and needed you at your desk, and that context matters in any dispute. So put it in writing now: email HR setting out the leave you requested or could not take and why, and ask for carryover or encashment. Keep copies — that record protects your end-of-service calculation later. If HR holds the line, a MOHRE complaint is the route. It would be sensible to have a licensed UAE lawyer look at the policy wording before you escalate.

Start with MOHRE — it is a federal ministry, so you can lodge the complaint through its app or call centre from anywhere, and the system assigns it based on the establishment that holds your work permit. Since your employer's licence is registered in Sharjah, the complaint will normally be handled through the Sharjah side, and if mediation fails, MOHRE's referral letter names the competent court. That letter, not the typing centre, is what settles the question. As a general rule the case follows the employer's registered establishment, though the place where you actually worked can also support jurisdiction; courts deal with this routinely, and a misfiled case gets transferred rather than thrown away, so the conflicting advice is less dangerous than it sounds. One caveat: if the employer is licensed in a free zone with its own employment regime, the route can differ, so check the licence type. Bring your contract, work permit details, payslips and the licence number when filing. Before time limits become a worry, it is worth having a licensed UAE labour lawyer confirm the right forum from your specific paperwork.

HR is closer to the legal position than your colleague. Under the UAE Labour Law, the timing of annual leave is set by the employer in line with work requirements — leave is your right, but when you take it is not solely your choice, and that applies during a notice period too. An employer can legitimately require you to work your full 30 days so the handover is completed, and many do exactly that with resigning staff. What they cannot do is make your unused leave disappear: any accrued days you have not taken by your last working day must be paid out in cash with your final settlement, calculated on your basic salary. So you will not lose the value of those 12 days either way — the question is only whether you spend them on a beach or receive them as money. If you would rather take the days, ask in writing; some employers agree, especially if the handover is genuinely done, but they are entitled to refuse. Check your final settlement carefully to confirm the leave payout, gratuity and any other dues are all included. If the settlement arrives short, an employment lawyer can quickly tell you whether the numbers match what the law requires.

The risk is real and the clock is already running. An employer can report a sponsored employee as absconding after a period of consecutive unexplained absence — typically around a week — and you describe being absent for over a week with no resignation and no communication. An absconding flag is much worse than a bad reference: it can block future work permits and affect your immigration file, and disputes about whether it was justified are harder to win when you genuinely stopped appearing without explanation. So do not stay silent another day. Send a written communication to the company now — email HR and your manager — either formally resigning with your notice period under your contract, or explaining your absence and the workplace problem that caused it. A documented resignation transforms the situation: you become an employee serving notice, not a vanished worker. If the issue with your manager involves mistreatment or unpaid dues, file a complaint with MOHRE in parallel so the grievance is on record before any report against you. Going back to serve notice, or negotiating an agreed early exit in writing, are both far better outcomes than being reported. Before you decide which way to go, a quick consultation with a labour lawyer could save you from a flag that follows you for years.

The first hearing is usually procedural, so do not panic — the judge will confirm the parties, check the file, and typically give directions or a date for memoranda and evidence rather than decide anything final. Proceedings are conducted in Arabic, and that is the single most practical point to prepare for: documents in English need certified legal translation before the court will rely on them, so start translating your key papers now rather than the night before. Bring your employment contract, payslips or bank statements showing what was and was not paid, your termination or resignation papers, the MOHRE referral letter, and any correspondence about your end-of-service. A lawyer is not mandatory — many employees represent themselves in labour cases, and worker claims below a set threshold are exempt from court fees, which keeps the door open — but representation helps once the employer files a defence or the arguments turn technical. If you attend alone, arrive early, bring your Emirates ID, and answer through the court interpreter if one is provided. Missing a hearing is the real danger, as cases can proceed without you. Many claimants handle the first hearing themselves, then engage a labour lawyer to draft the substantive memoranda — that mix is often the sensible balance.

Breaks sit on top of working hours, not inside them — that is the legal default, so clocking out for lunch is not itself the problem. The problem is the arithmetic it creates. Normal working hours under the Labour Law are capped at eight per day and forty-eight per week, so if you are now performing nine hours of actual work plus an unpaid hour of lunch, the company is over the cap, and the extra hour has to be treated and paid as overtime unless your role falls into one of the narrow exempt categories. There is also the contract point: you agreed to nine hours including lunch — effectively eight worked. Moving everyone to ten hours on site with nine worked is a unilateral change to agreed terms, and an employer cannot worsen contractual conditions without the employee's consent. Practical steps: keep your clock-in and clock-out records, put the discrepancy to HR in writing, and ask the company either to restore the contractual arrangement or to pay the additional hour as overtime. If it does neither, a MOHRE complaint follows naturally. A licensed UAE lawyer can confirm whether any exemption genuinely covers your role.

Yes, this is a familiar pressure tactic, and yes, the counterclaim is normally heard in the same case as your claim — the court deals with both and offsets any amounts it actually awards. But do not let the tactic work: a counterclaim is only as strong as its evidence, and the burden sits on the employer. For alleged equipment damage, they must prove the damage happened, that you caused it, and what it genuinely cost — not just assert it. For training costs, recovery generally requires a prior written agreement in which you undertook to repay defined training expenses in defined circumstances; a figure invented after you sued, never mentioned during your employment or in your final settlement discussions, tends to impress judges very little. The timing itself is your friend: point out that no damage report, deduction, or training-cost demand existed before you filed for your salary and gratuity. Respond formally to the counterclaim rather than ignoring it — submit a written reply with your contract, any handover or asset-return records, and the absence of any signed training-cost undertaking. Your own claim continues in parallel and is not suspended by theirs. An employment lawyer can prepare the defence to the counterclaim alongside pressing your original claim.

Frustratingly, the company is likely within its rights by default. Under the UAE Labour Law, official holidays and rest days that fall during a period of annual leave are counted as part of that leave unless the employment contract or the employer's own regulations say otherwise. Annual leave is expressed in calendar days — thirty per completed year — not working days, so a break that spans a weekend can lawfully have those weekend days deducted from your balance. The place to look is your contract and the staff handbook: many employers grant leave in working days as a more generous term, and if yours does, HR must honour it, because agreed terms that improve on the law are binding. If the documents are silent, the calendar-day deduction stands. What you can do: read the leave clause carefully, ask HR in writing which rule they apply and where it is written, and plan future bookings so weekends sit at the edges rather than the middle. If your contract does promise working days and HR refuses to apply it, that is a contractual dispute you can escalate to MOHRE. A licensed UAE employment lawyer can quickly confirm which regime your wording creates.

Your logic is sound: an absconding report is tied to an active sponsorship — it exists to flag a sponsored employee who has disappeared from work — and once your visa cancellation was completed, that employment relationship formally ended. A report filed weeks after cancellation, over a handover disagreement, sits on very shaky ground; handover disputes are civil or labour matters to be raised through proper channels, not grounds for an absconding entry against someone the company no longer sponsors. That said, do not rely on logic alone — verify what is actually on your file. Check your status through the ICP smart services or, for a Dubai visa, the GDRFA, or have a registered typing centre pull the record. Secondhand reports from former colleagues are often wrong about what was really filed. If an entry does exist, challenge it: present your visa cancellation document showing the date the relationship ended, and ask MOHRE and the immigration authority to remove a report that post-dates the cancellation. Keep your cancellation paper and final settlement records safe, as they are your core evidence. If the company genuinely believes you owe a handover obligation, the burden is on them to pursue it lawfully. A labour lawyer can confirm your file status and have any improperly logged report struck off.