The general labor strike in Costa Rica is going on 11 days, more than 30 institutions have presented their request to the labor courts to declare the illegality of the movement, yet, nothing has happened.

Is the general labor strike legal or illegal? And why has it taken so long for judges to make their decision on this matter?

The main problem comes from the changes made last year to the Labor Procedural Law which established new rules for the right to strike that is established in the Political Constitution.

Legal or Illegal?

Going on strike is a protected right and the objective or goal of the movement must be to defend or improve the social and economic interests of the workers.

The law establishes that for the strike to be considered legal it must be a peaceful and arranged movement, workers must have exhausted the existing alternatives of conciliation available with their employer and have the support of a 50% of the workers called to an assembly (in the case there is a labor union) if there isn’t an established union or the union doesn’t cover enough employees the quorum must reach 35% of the total employees and if half plus one are in favor of the strike it complies with the law.

The employer has the right to request the strike to be declared illegal presenting the case to the corresponding court.

In this case, most institutions affected by the strike presented their cases the first and second days of the strike. Among the reasons claimed by the institutions are the fact that the movement is not against the employers but against a political bill, that not all options of conciliation were exhausted, and the interruption of “essential” services.

The Labor Procedural Law establishes that the suspension of essential services is forbidden. These essential services are for example, attention at clinics and hospitals, airports, transportation of merchandise, etc.

It is up to a labor judge to decide whether the strike is legal or illegal, and each of the requests presented by the institutions must be analyzed separately.

Why is it taking so long?

Each judge must receive the requests of illegality, analyze it and has 24 hours to decide if it has the elements to proceed, if it does, then he must arrange to notify the other party and grants them 3 business days to respond and present their case.

Once the response is received the judge has another 3 business days to analyze the case and proof offered and can then dictate the sentence or call a hearing to receive proofs. The judge then can declare the strike legal or illegal, but the party affected can still present an appeal and the judges have another 5 business days to make their decision.

It is not until the appeal is resolved that the sentence is considered final or firm, and at this point, if the strike was declared illegal the workers have 24 hours to go back to their work, if they don’t go back in that time frame then the employer is entitled to fire them without responsibility. If, however, the employees go back to work in the 24 hours granted, the employers cannot take any measures against them except begin the procedure to get reimbursed for the payments made to these employees while they were on strike (amounts paid during the strike will be deducted from the employees’ salary).

Following the complete process, the final sentence of the judges will not come until at least the end of September of first week of October, depending on when each institution presented their requests and depending on each judge.