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The midday break rule exists for exactly your situation. Every summer — broadly from mid-June to mid-September — work under direct sunlight and in open areas is prohibited during the midday hours, and construction sites are the rule's main target. Employers must reschedule work around the ban and provide shaded rest areas and water; MOHRE inspects sites through the season and fines companies for each worker found in violation. A foreman keeping a crew going through the afternoon heat in that window is not a grey area. Reporting is straightforward: complaints go through MOHRE's call centre or app, and you can flag a violating site without identifying yourself publicly — inspections do not name the worker who triggered them. As for your job: retaliating against a worker for reporting a violation is itself unlawful, and a dismissal provoked by a complaint can ground an abusive-dismissal claim with compensation. Keep simple evidence — dates, times, and photos if it is safe to take them. If you are dismissed or threatened after raising it, speak to a licensed UAE labour lawyer promptly; the timing of a dismissal right after a complaint speaks loudly.

The employer's power here is real but not unlimited. Under UAE labour law the company may set leave timing according to work requirements — that part is true — but annual leave itself is a statutory entitlement, and a scheduling power used to deny leave altogether stops being scheduling and becomes a violation. More than a year of refusals, on every request, with no alternative dates ever offered, is well past that line. Build the record first: submit requests through the official channel, offer two or three alternative windows each time, and keep the rejections in writing. Then escalate internally — a short, factual email to HR noting that no leave has been approved in over a year and asking for confirmed dates within a defined period. If that produces nothing, file a complaint with MOHRE; a documented pattern of blanket refusals is exactly what mediators respond to. Remember also that accrued untaken leave must be compensated at end of service, so the record you build protects your money either way. An employment lawyer licensed in the UAE can help frame the complaint so it lands as a denial of entitlement rather than a scheduling quarrel.

Yes — reduced Ramadan hours apply to the private sector, not just government. Under the federal Labour Law, normal daily working hours are reduced by two during Ramadan, and the federal rule applies to employees generally rather than only to those who are fasting. An office simply staying silent does not switch the entitlement off. One nuance: a few free zones run their own employment laws — the DIFC, for example, ties the reduction to employees observing the fast — so it is worth checking which regime your employer falls under. If you are under the mainland Labour Law or a free zone that follows it, the two-hour reduction is yours, and the company cannot demand the missing hours back later or dock pay for them. The practical route: raise it with HR in writing before Ramadan begins, framed as a question rather than an accusation — most non-compliance here is oversight rather than defiance. If the company refuses outright, that is a working-hours violation you can take to MOHRE. A licensed UAE employment lawyer can confirm how the rule applies to your specific contract and zone if HR pushes back.

What your company is doing is unlawful, and your coworker is right that the authorities know the scheme well — transferring the full registered salary through WPS and then clawing part of it back in cash is wage manipulation dressed up as compliance, and it defeats the entire purpose of the system. The practical question is evidence, because on paper the company looks clean. Quietly build a record: bank statements showing the credits, any messages or voice notes asking for the cash back, dates and amounts you handed over, and which colleagues experienced the same. Several workers reporting an identical pattern is far harder to dismiss than one. Complaints go through MOHRE's call centre or app, and you can flag the violation without making yourself the public face of it. On the job-loss fear: dismissing a worker for reporting a violation is itself unlawful, and a termination that follows a complaint can support an abusive-dismissal claim with compensation — the timing tells its own story. Be careful what you sign, too; never sign receipts saying you received money you handed back. A licensed UAE labour lawyer can help you and your colleagues structure the complaint safely.

You can apply to stay. Workers with a labour case still before MOHRE or the courts can obtain a temporary permit from the immigration authorities so a visa cancellation does not force them out mid-claim. The usual route is to get a letter from the court or MOHRE confirming the dispute is pending, then apply through the immigration authority (GDRFA in Dubai, ICP elsewhere) before your post-cancellation grace period runs out; the permit is issued for a limited, renewable period tied to the case. And no, leaving does not kill the case. You can sign a power of attorney for a lawyer or trusted representative to continue it; if you are already abroad, the power of attorney is signed there and legalised through the UAE embassy. Judgments can be issued and enforced in your absence, and any award transferred to you. Practical steps: secure the pending-case letter now, apply for the permit promptly, and keep copies of your contract, payslips and the cancellation paper. A labour lawyer licensed in the UAE can handle the permit application and run the case whether you stay or go.

A form signed in your first week does not hand the company your gratuity. Training repayment clauses are not automatically void in the UAE — an employer who genuinely funded a course can, in principle, agree recovery terms — but enforcing one is nothing like a free pass to deduct. The employer needs to show a real, documented cost: invoices, what the training was, who delivered it, what was actually paid. A round figure that happens to swallow almost your whole end-of-service, with no breakdown ever shown to you, is exactly the kind of claim UAE courts treat with suspicion. Deductions from a worker's entitlements are restricted by law, and a disputed debt is for a court to award, not for HR to self-serve from your gratuity. So ask in writing for the full breakdown and supporting invoices, refuse to sign any final settlement acknowledging the deduction, and if they withhold the money anyway, file with MOHRE — the burden of proving the cost sits with them. Before you sign anything at all, it is worth letting a licensed UAE employment lawyer read the clause; wording and timing often decide these cases.

HR is reciting the default rule: end-of-service gratuity is calculated on basic salary, excluding allowances — and on a plain reading of a contract with a small basic and variable extras, that produces the tiny number you fear. But where pay is wholly or mainly commission, the position is genuinely more nuanced. UAE courts look at how remuneration was actually structured, and regularly paid commission that forms the real core of an agreed pay package has, in some cases, been treated as part of the wage for end-of-service purposes rather than as a bonus sitting outside it. The outcome turns on your contract wording, how the commission was promised and paid, and how consistent it was month to month. So before accepting HR's figure, assemble the evidence: your contract, any commission scheme documents, and bank statements or payslips showing the pattern over the years. Calculate the gratuity both ways so you know what is actually at stake. Then raise it through MOHRE if the employer will not engage. This is an area where the paperwork decides everything, and a licensed UAE lawyer reviewing your contract can tell you quickly whether the commission argument has legs in your case.

There is no rule in the Labour Law banning annual leave during probation, but your entitlement does build with service, which is where your manager's six-month idea comes from — in distorted form. The law gives thirty calendar days of annual leave per completed year, and once you pass six months of service you become entitled to leave on a pro-rated basis. Before that point you have little accrued statutory leave to insist on, and the employer also controls timing: leave dates are set according to work requirements, so a refusal during probation is usually lawful even where a blanket nothing-for-six-months policy appears nowhere in writing. What the company cannot do is erase the leave you are accruing — it stays on your balance and follows you. Practically: ask whether the refusal is about timing or policy, request unpaid leave if the need is urgent, and get any arrangement in writing. If refusals continue after your entitlement has clearly accrued, that becomes a matter you can raise with MOHRE. A UAE-licensed employment lawyer can read your contract and tell you exactly what you can demand, and when.

Start with MOHRE, and start together — a collective complaint from twenty employees about an establishment that has shut and stopped paying gets a very different level of attention from twenty scattered ones. File through the MOHRE app or call centre; the ministry will attempt contact with the employer, and when the employer has effectively vanished, the dispute is referred to the labour court. Your unpaid salaries and end-of-service rank as privileged claims against whatever assets the company has. In parallel, check the trade licence status with the economic department of the relevant emirate — whether it is active, expired or cancelled shapes the route — and gather what each of you holds: contracts, work permits, WPS bank statements, and the last communications from the owner. If any of you subscribed to the involuntary loss of employment insurance scheme, claim under it; that is what it exists for. Ask MOHRE explicitly about your visa positions too, since employees of a non-operating establishment can usually be released to transfer to new sponsors. With this many claimants and an absent owner, pooling funds for one licensed UAE lawyer to run the group claim is usually the efficient move.

Your former colleague has it right: the Labour Law requires the employer to pay all end-of-service entitlements within fourteen days of the contract end date. At three weeks and counting, the company is already in breach — with finance is not a legal category. Move in two steps. First, send a short written demand to HR and whoever signs off payroll: state the cancellation date, the fourteen-day rule, the amounts due — final salary, gratuity, leave encashment, anything else unpaid — and give a deadline of a few days. Written demands concentrate minds and create the record you need next. Second, if the deadline passes, file a complaint with MOHRE; you can do this through the app or call centre, and the process works even after visa cancellation and even from outside the country. Mediation resolves most of these quickly; if not, the case is referred to the labour court. Do not let it drift, either — labour claims are subject to a one-year time limit from when the entitlement fell due. If the sums are significant or the company starts inventing deductions, have a licensed UAE lawyer review the settlement calculation before you accept anything.