UAE Moves to 4.5 Day Work Weeks Starting January 1

The key point to note is that this change applies to the public-sector only. It is a shift away from Sun-Thu work week to Mon-Fri. The half day Friday is for religious reasons. There is nothing we’ve seen so far to suggest the 4.5 days has anything to do with worker well-being.<p>The feeling on the ground in the UAE is that the private sector will have to follow suit - but no one is quite sure how this will happen yet. The announcement was very sudden. While rumours of this had been circulating for a number of years, this was announced without prior communication this afternoon.<p>There is some expectation already that private sector companies will be allowed to ‘contract out’ of the half day Friday requirement in employment contracts.<p>While the work week shift creates complexities with local (key) trade partners such as KSA which will retain Sun-Thu work week, the thinking is that this will benefit the UAE economy by aligning with those countries operating on Mon-Fri.

how... does this work in offices which work around deadlines? i mean for lawyers, you have to file a case, do work by a specific date regardless of monday or saturday. same for accountants or heck, banks. banks can&#x27;t just say &quot;well its a saturday or a friday. we need you to come in on a monday&quot;.<p>i one idea is to hire more staff and then rotate them but that doesn&#x27;t scale properly.<p>genuinely curious how these systems work

Wonder if those 4.5 Day work weeks apply to migrant domestic workers?<p>Heh, of course not.

So they have to work 40 hours in 4.5 days ?