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He Violated Our Employment Deal: Can I Sue Him?

01 November, 2017
Q As-salam-o-alaikum. I'm writing this urgently with a bit of confusion, but I need to put my emotion away and seek for fairness in my favour. I worked with someone with the agreement that the job would not be recorded as an official job (to supplement my living) and I agreed to a deducted payment and irregular appointments which involves cancellation without notice and unstable time frame. I agreed to this because it is the nature of irregular jobs. I pursed my regular job because of him to save my official hours and work later during the year. To my surprise, towards the end of the job which was just cancelled without any formal notice since it was not formal, my employer informed me that he has made the job formal by registering it without my knowledge and no formal contract which mean I would not enjoy all the formal benefits. That left me lost and affected financially because it means he has booked all my allocated formal work hours which implied that I would not be able to work formally with any benefit for the year. Because of this, I went to report him to the authority to force him to show me how much he recorded in the pay slip. He inflated the amount he recorded officially for the government and he underpaid me. Now, the prosecutor has started investigating him and they told him he must pay all the amount he told them he paid me since he changed the nature of the agreement from informal job (which made me endure the stress and the zero benefit) to a formal job without benefit. They are planning to legally enforce that he repays everything he recorded for me and also pay all the full benefits in addition to what he paid irregularly because he had no prove for the payment ( he wanted to cheat me and also cheat the authority to evade tax). Is it haram to collect all the money in addition to what he already paid me irregularly or is it halal because he was the reason I was not allowed to use my official work hours elsewhere after he changed his plans and made me lose all the other benefits? Please, state reasons for whatever opinion you have within the confines of sharia.

Answer

Short Answer: “You should pursue the case to its legal extent and actually take the amount the court assigns to you. But you are only entitled to fair formal salary and fair formal benefits. Anything above that which is awarded to you should be given in charity. Although it is paid by the employer, he does not deserve to have it returned because of his wrong-doing. What he did to you was not permissible, according to what I see based on my understanding of Shari’ah.”


Dear Brother or sister, Assalamu Alaykum wa Rahmatu Allahi wa Barakatuh.

The Core of the Problem: He Violated An Agreement

The principle is: you are entitled to compensation of any actual financial damage he caused you by his arbitrary change of what you agreed on.

This is a general overwhelming principle in Shari’ah in all cases of injury, financial or otherwise.

No one is entitled to profiteer from an injury or from failure of the other party to keep to their contractual obligations.

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Accordingly, if you actually lost an offer given to you because the employer formalized your work with him, you can take the difference between the amount this offer would have given you and the actual pay you received from the employer.

This does not seem to be the case as you did not mention such an offer.

Losing an opportunity alone is not recognizable and not exactly estimable.

Pursue the Legal Case, But Only Take What’s Due to You

On the other hand, by formalizing your job, which is in violation of your consensual agreement for which you accepted a reduced wage, this makes you entitled to a normal fair salary and normal benefits during the period you worked with him.

Moreover, you suffered more financial loss after you willingly left your other job, thinking he would keep his end of the deal.

The salary he reported to the tax authority is irrelevant (especially since it is known that all people try to evade taxes as much as they can).

Furthermore, his violation of the agreement and the tax laws make him deserve fines and punishment according to the law.

These last two points make me reach the following conclusion: you should pursue the case to its legal extent and actually take the amount the court assigns to you.

But you are only entitled to fair formal salary and fair formal benefits.

Anything above that which is awarded to you should be given in charity.

Although it is paid by the employer, he does not deserve to have it returned because of his wrong-doing.

What he did to you was not permissible, according to what I see based on my understanding of Shari’ah.

Wa Allahu A’alam, Wassalam


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About Prof. Dr. Monzer Kahf
Dr. Monzer Kahf is a professor and consultant/trainer on Islamic banking, finance, Zakah, Awqaf, Islamic Inheritance, Islamic estate planning, Islamic family law, and other aspects of Islamic economics, finance, Islamic transactions (Mu'amalat). Dr. Monzer Kahf is currently Professor of Islamic Finance & Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Management, Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, Turkey