Sick leave: 15 days, 30 days, 45 days — and what the ladder doesn't tell you

The ladder

Article 31(3) of Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 gives a worker, after the probationary period ends, sick leave of not more than 90 continuous or intermittent days per year, calculated as:

Days 1–15	full pay
Days 16–45 (the following 30)	half pay
Days 46–90 (the following period)	unpaid

"Continuous or intermittent" matters more than it looks. The ladder is not three separate allowances that reset each time you fall ill — it is one running total for the year. Four separate four-day absences put you at day 16 and onto half pay for the fifth, even though you were never off for more than a working week at a stretch.

Which year? The statute says only "per year". The government portal resolves it as per year of service — so the counter resets on your employment anniversary, not on 1 January. That distinction decides whether an illness in December and another in February fall in the same 90-day pot, and payroll departments do not always get it right. If yours is running the count on the calendar year, the portal's wording is what to point at.

Full pay and half pay of what, exactly?

Article 31 says "full pay" and "half pay". It does not use either of the two terms the law carefully defines in Article 1 — wage (basic plus allowances) and basic wage (the contract figure for the work itself, excluding allowances). One article earlier, in the maternity provision, the drafters wrote "full wage" and "half wage". They had the defined term to hand and used it there.

The natural reading, and standard practice, is therefore that sick pay runs on the full wage including allowances, halved for days 16–45. We state that as a reading rather than as quoted text, because the article does not spell it out. What it does mean in practice: an employer paying the half-pay stretch at half of basic salary is on the weaker side of the argument, and on a package that is half allowances that halving-of-a-halving is a serious amount of money.

Three working days, and what happens if you miss them

Article 31(1) puts one obligation on the worker and it is short: inform the employer or their representative of the sickness within a period not exceeding three working days, and submit a medical report on the condition issued by the medical entity.

This deadline carries far more weight than its two lines suggest, because of what sits next to it. Under Article 44(8), an employer may dismiss a worker without notice for absence without a legitimate reason or an excuse accepted by the employer for more than seven consecutive days, or more than 20 intermittent days in a year. The medical report is what converts an absence into a legitimate one. Miss the notification window on a long illness and you are not merely arguing about pay — you are inside the fact pattern for summary dismissal.

Two related traps sit in the same part of the law. Article 34: a worker who does not return directly to work after a leave ends, without a legitimate reason, is not entitled to wages for the period of absence that follows. And a medical report from a facility your employer does not recognise is a predictable fight — the article says "the medical entity", so use a licensed government or private healthcare facility and keep the original.

When sick pay is refused — and the proof the employer has to produce

Article 31(4) removes the entitlement to wages where the sickness resulted from the worker's own misconduct. Article 21 of the Implementing Regulation, Cabinet Resolution No. 1 of 2022, defines what that means and, more usefully, what the employer has to show:

• the disease resulted from the worker's misconduct, such as consumption of alcohol or drugs; or
• the worker violated safety instructions — crisis and disaster instructions, traffic regulations, or safety rules in the establishment's own regulations that the worker was informed of and acknowledged understanding and complying with.

The prerequisite most people never learn about. Article 21(2) states that a report from the concerned authorities in the State, proving the disease resulted from the worker's misconduct, is a prerequisite for applying the alcohol-and-drugs limb. An employer cannot simply assert it, or rely on a manager's impression, and dock the pay. Without the official report, the deduction has no basis. Note also the second limb's condition: safety rules only bite if the worker was informed of them and acknowledged them — an unposted, unsigned policy does not do the job.

Losing sick pay is also not the same as losing sick leave. Article 31(4) removes the wage; it does not turn the absence into an unexcused one.

The cost nobody adds up: unpaid sick days and your gratuity

End-of-service gratuity is calculated on the service term — 21 days' basic wage for each of the first five years, 30 days for each year after that. And Article 51(4) says plainly: the unpaid days of absence from work shall not be included in the calculation of the service term.

Days 46–90 of the sick-leave ladder are unpaid days of absence from work. On the face of Article 51(4) they come out of the service term, and therefore out of the gratuity — a second, delayed cost on top of the wages already forgone.

Stated honestly, because the drafting is not uniform. Article 51(4) is a general rule and reads on unpaid sick days without straining. But note that where the drafters wanted the exclusion beyond doubt they said so expressly: Article 30(2), on the 45 unpaid days a mother may take after maternity leave for illness arising from pregnancy or childbirth, states that "this period is not included within the service term". Article 31 contains no equivalent sentence. Article 33(2) likewise spells out the exclusion for discretionary unpaid leave. So the general rule points one way and the absence of a specific sentence gives an employee something to argue. Treat it as the likely outcome to plan around, check the arithmetic on your own settlement, and ask payroll which start-to-end dates they used.

What ninety days actually costs — worked through

Package of AED 20,000 a month, of which AED 10,000 is basic salary. Four years of service. The worker exhausts the full 90-day ladder in one service year.

Days 1–15 — full pay	paid AED 10,000  ·  forgone AED 0
Days 16–45 — half pay	paid AED 10,000 of AED 20,000  ·  forgone AED 10,000
Days 46–90 — unpaid	paid AED 0 of AED 30,000  ·  forgone AED 30,000
45 unpaid days removed from the service term (Art. 51(4))	45 ÷ 365 × 21 days × (10,000 ÷ 30)  ·  forgone ≈ AED 863
Total cost of the three months	≈ AED 40,863

The 30-day divisor used to turn a monthly figure into a daily one is standard payroll and MOHRE practice, not a figure written into Article 31. A contract that specifies a different divisor will be applied as written.

The same ninety days as a work injury: a different law entirely

Article 31 opens with a qualifier that decides everything: it applies where the worker "is infected by a disease not arising from work injury". A work injury or an occupational disease is not sick leave at all — it runs on its own regime, set out in full here. Under Article 37(2) the employer must:

• bear the expenses of treatment until the worker recovers or disability is established — which the Implementing Regulation, at Article 23(1), spells out as the hospital stay, surgical procedures, X-rays and medical analyses, medicines, rehabilitation equipment, prosthetic limbs and devices, and the transport costs incurred for treatment; and
• pay the full wage throughout the treatment period or for six months, whichever is less — and, if treatment runs past six months, half wage for a further six months, or until cure, disability or death is proven, whichever comes first.

Set the two regimes side by side on the same ninety days off work, same package:

Ordinary illness — Art. 31	15 days full, 30 half, 45 unpaid → paid AED 20,000, plus service-term erosion
Work injury / occupational disease — Art. 37	90 days at full wage → paid AED 60,000, treatment costs on the employer, no unpaid days to erode the service term

A difference of roughly AED 40,000 on identical time away from work, turning entirely on classification. If the illness or injury plausibly arose from the work — the job's hazards, an accident on duty, an occupational disease on the schedule — that classification is worth vastly more attention than the sick note itself, and it is the employer who has an interest in calling it ordinary sickness.

Article 38 lists when work-injury compensation is lost: deliberate self-injury; injury under the influence of alcohol, narcotics or psychotropic substances; deliberate violation of preventive instructions displayed in visible areas; wilful misconduct; and refusing, without serious reason, to be examined or to follow the prescribed treatment. Each of those must be proven through the investigations of the competent authorities — again, not asserted by the employer. Regulation Article 23(3) adds a further condition on the "displayed instructions" limb: it applies only if the employer actually did the safety briefing, in Arabic and a language the worker understands, provided the protective equipment and trained the worker to use it.

Can you be dismissed while you are on sick leave?

This is where the plain-language summaries and the statute part company, so it is worth being precise.

The government portal states that an employer may not dismiss an employee or give a termination notice while the employee is on sick leave, and that once the 90 days are used and the employee still cannot report to work, the employer may terminate — with end-of-service benefits payable.

The statute does not contain that flat prohibition. What it contains is three provisions that get to a similar place by a different route:

• Article 31(5) — the employer may terminate after the sick leave referred to in the article is finished, if the worker is unable to return to work, provided the worker receives all financial entitlements under the Decree-Law and its Regulation. Gratuity and the rest survive this route; it is not a dismissal for cause.
• Article 46 — the employer may not terminate for lack of health fitness before the legally accrued leaves are used. And any agreement to the contrary is null and void, expressly including one concluded before this law came into force. This is the real protection, and it is stronger than a mere prohibition because it cannot be contracted around.
• Article 35 — where either party wishes to terminate while the worker is on leave, the agreed notice period does not begin to run until the day after the worker was scheduled to return, unless both parties agree otherwise. Its premise is that termination during leave is contemplated; its effect is to stop notice being burned through the leave.

What to do with the divergence. For most practical purposes the outcomes converge: an employer who serves notice during your sick leave gains nothing, because the clock will not start until you are due back, and cannot lawfully end your service for medical unfitness until your accrued leaves are used. But if you are arguing the point — in a MOHRE complaint or in writing to HR — cite Articles 46 and 35, which are in the statute, rather than resting on the portal's summary sentence, which is not.

Probation, and the leave you do not have yet

Article 31(2) is blunt: there is no paid sick leave during the probationary period. The employer may grant unpaid sick leave, based on a medical report from the medical entity stating that the leave is necessary — but "may" is discretionary, not an entitlement.

The practical consequence is that a serious illness in the first six months is the worst-timed event in a UAE employment contract: no sick pay, no ILOE cover for a resignation, and a probationary notice regime that is not symmetrical. If that is where you are, read probation: 14 days, or one month? before making any move, and note that leaving the country during probation without proper notice can cost you a work permit for a year.

After maternity leave: a separate 45 days

Article 30(2) gives a female worker, after using her 60-day maternity leave, up to 45 further days without wage — continuous or intermittent — where the absence is due to her own or her child's illness arising from the pregnancy or childbirth, proven by a medical certificate from the medical entity. That period is expressly excluded from the service term for gratuity and from the retirement-scheme contribution period.

This sits alongside, not inside, the Article 31 ladder — and Article 30(6) confirms that being on maternity leave or absent under Article 30 does not prejudice the right to the other leaves. Article 30(8) separately prohibits terminating a female worker's service, or notifying her of it, because of pregnancy, maternity leave or that absence.

If the sick pay simply does not arrive

Withheld sick pay travels the same route as any other unpaid entitlement, and the route is free.

1. Put it in writing to the employer first, citing Article 31(3) and the dates of the medical report. A paper trail is what a complaint is built from.
2. File the MOHRE complaint — free, on the app or through 80060. See when the final payment doesn't arrive for the thresholds, the referral to court and the deadline that ends late claims.
3. If wages generally have stopped rather than just the sick pay, the WPS penalty ladder is a faster lever — see your salary is late.
4. If service is ended after the leave under Article 31(5), check the settlement against what you are actually owed before signing anything: gratuity, untaken annual leave, and notice pay. A full-and-final signed early closes off the difference.