Hiring in Tunisia: the contract visa, residence and the contract, step by step

Move someone who is already in Tunisia

A foreign national works only in the profession and the region their contract names. No employer can hire or keep a foreign worker without a contract carrying the visa, so a move to a new employer needs a new contract with its own visa.

A Tunisian employee on an open-ended contract gives a month's notice, by registered letter.

Check the role is open to a non-Tunisian

Tunisia's Labour Code bars recruiting a foreign national where Tunisian skills are available in the specialty. Each foreign hire is approved on its own, through the visa on the contract.

No employer can hire or keep a foreign worker without the visaed contract and the residence card. Nor can it employ one in a profession or a region the contract does not name.

Set the contract up right

A contract of employment is open-ended unless the law allows otherwise. A fixed-term contract is allowed only in exceptional cases: an unusual rise in the volume of services or work, standing in for a permanent employee who is absent or whose contract is suspended, seasonal work, or activities that by custom or their nature cannot use an open-ended contract.

A fixed-term contract is made in writing. Without the writing, without a term, or outside those cases, it is open-ended. Staff on a fixed term have the same rights as permanent staff doing the same work, and first call on permanent posts with the same employer. An employee kept on after a fixed term ends moves to an open-ended contract, keeping their seniority.

A trial period is allowed on an open-ended contract only. It lasts up to six months, and can be renewed once for as long again. Either side ends it on 15 days' notice, in a form that leaves a written trace. If a contract ends during the trial, any later contract between the same two sides is open-ended, with no trial.

Pay is in Tunisian legal tender. A contract can be full time or part time.

Actual work is up to 48 hours a week. A collective agreement or a regulation can bring that down, but not below 40. Overtime is paid at 75% more in a 48-hour regime. In a shorter full-time regime it is paid at 25% more up to the 48th hour and 50% more after it, and part time at 50% more. No week goes over 60 hours.

The weekly rest is 24 consecutive hours, on a Friday, a Saturday or a Sunday. Another day needs the two sides' agreement or the regional governor's authorisation. The labour inspectorate is told which day applies.

Know the employee test before you engage a contractor

Tunisia's Labour Code treats as a contract of employment any agreement under which one person provides services to another, under that person's management and control, for a wage. The relationship can be proved by any means.

Someone who works under your direction in Tunisia for a wage is an employee, whatever their contract calls them. A role that needs a work permit goes through employer of record.

Know the leave your people are entitled to

End employment on the law's terms

A fixed-term contract ends at its term, or when the work it was for is done. Any contract also ends by agreement, for gross misconduct by the other side, on force majeure or the employee's death, by a court's ruling, and in the other cases the law sets.

An open-ended contract ends on a month's notice, sent by registered letter. During the second half of the notice, the employee can be away to look for work, on full pay. An employer that dismisses states the reasons in the notice letter. A dismissal without a real and serious cause, or without following the legal procedure, is abusive.

Gross misconduct is a real and serious cause. The Code's examples include a deliberate act or omission that disrupts the business, refusing a lawful order without reason, theft, drunkenness at work, absence without leave, violence or threats at work, and disclosing a professional secret.

An employee on an open-ended contract dismissed after the trial period, other than for gross misconduct, is owed an end-of-service payment. It is a day's pay for each month of actual work, up to three months' pay.

An abusive dismissal costs damages of one to two months' pay for each year of service, up to three years' pay. Where the cause was real but the procedure was not followed, the damages are one to four months' pay. A claim is filed within a year of the dismissal. An employer that ends a fixed-term contract early without cause pays the wages for the rest of its term.

A dismissal for economic or technical reasons starts with notice to the labour inspectorate. The inspectorate tries to reconcile the two sides within 15 days. Where that fails, it refers the case within three days to the dismissals committee, which gives its view within 15 days.

No woman can be dismissed during pregnancy, or during maternity or nursing leave, for reasons connected with them.

See what changed this year, and what is next