UAE To Shift To Saturday-Sunday Weekend in Line With Global Markets (reuters.com) 11
The United Arab Emirates will shift to a working week of four and half days with a Saturday-Sunday weekend from the start of next year to better align its economy with global markets, but private companies will be free to choose their own working week. From a report: The oil-producing Gulf state, the region's commercial, trade and tourism hub, currently has a Friday-Saturday weekend. From Jan. 1, however, the weekend will start on Friday afternoon, including for schools, a government circular said. "Each company, depending on the sector they operate in and what suits and serves their business best, can choose the weekend they decide for their employees," Minister of Human Resources and Emiratisation Abdulrahman al-Awar told Reuters. Over the past year, the UAE has taken measures to make its economy more attractive to foreign investment and talent at a time of growing economic rivalry with Saudi Arabia.
Israel does it (Score:2)
Israel has a traditional Jewish Friday-Saturday weekend, and is unlikely to ever change. Doesn't seem to prevent it from being well aligned with the world markets.
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As someone who works at a company that has offices in both Israel and Canada, I see it as a net positive having a day where we don't have to deal with people on the other side.
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Makes sense (Score:2)
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I've worked with countries all over the globe and misaligned weekend days caused a lot of delays in our business.
Only if you don't schedule appropriately. I've worked in global firms with customers and contractors in the Middle East. We simply schedule work appropriately.
This is truly no different from having to deal with customers on a 10+/- hour different timezone.
It's not like misaligned weeks are something that just happened and catches us by surprise. It's a given that good logistics take into account from the get-go.
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That's a good first step (Score:2)
Now, they need to get on board with the common practice of accepting notarized documents like everywhere else in the world instead of demanding that documents be signed and witnessed in country.
It's the dictionary that's wrong (Score:2)
This would be trivially solvable just by rewriting the dictionary so Sunday = = and everybody has the religious-day-off on the same day.
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Ah, non-ASCII and slashdot... I mean Sunday = (Hebrew for Saturday) = (Arabic for Friday)