EGYPT Law and Practice Contributed by: Mohamed Hashish, Heba El Abd, Farida Rezk, Omar Aboul-Ella, Mariam Rabie and Mohamed Selim, Soliman, Hashish & Partners
prior provisions under the Previous Labour Law, which mandated a notice period of two months for employees with less than ten years of ser - vice and three months for those with ten years or more of service. According to both the Previous and New Labour Law, if the employer terminates a permanent employment without proof of any Gross Error by the employee, the said employee shall be entitled to compensation equivalent to the salary of at least two months for each year of service in addition to any other financial entitlements (if any). Employees, under the New Labour Law, shall terminate the contract if the employer fails to fulfil a significant obligation arising from the New Labour Law, the individual or collective employ - ment contract, or the establishment’s regula - tions. Furthermore, termination is permissible if the employee or their relatives experience assault by the employer or their representatives. In such instances, the termination is regarded as equivalent to dismissal by the employer without just cause. Accordingly, the employee will be entitled to compensation for unfair termination, in addition to other financial entitlements. Under both the Previous and New Labour Law, the employer shall have the right to completely or partially shut down the organisation or reduce its size by terminating the employment con - tracts of a number of employees to mitigate any economic crisis, provided that (i) a downsizing request is submitted to the competent authority for approval; and (ii) the competent syndication and the employees shall be notified of both the downsizing request and approval. In this case, a dismissed employee shall be enti - tled to the following end-of-service indemnity:
• an indemnity equivalent to one month of their salary for the first five years; and • an indemnity equivalent to one month and a half of their salary for the remaining period. Should the employer fail to obtain the necessary approval from the competent authorities for the downsizing and proceed to reduce its size by terminating the employment contracts of several employees, those employees shall be entitled to monetary compensation, as such terminations The Egyptian Trade Union Law No 213 of 2017 grants the employees of an establishment the full right to establish, join or withdraw from a union committee, in accordance with the appli - cable Egyptian laws and internal regulations of the relevant union committee. will be considered unfair dismissals. 4.5 Employee Representations In order for a union committee to acquire legal personality and to be able to exercise its activi - ties, it should be formed of at least 50 employ - ees. As of the date on which the required docu - ments are provided to the relevant administrative authority and provided that the establishment conditions are fully satisfied, the union commit - tee shall be considered to be legally established under the Trade Union Law. The union committee shall be entitled to directly exercise and manage the following matters with the relevant employer: • resolving individual and collective disputes relating to their members; • collective labour agreements at the enterprise level; • participating with the general trade union in the preparation of draft collective labour
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