Protesters March in Costa Rica Against Anti-Worker Laws and Defense of Social Security

The repeal of the Public Employment Framework Law, the rejection of the legal proposal for 4/3 shifts (four days of work, 12 hours and three days off) and the Government’s decision to move forward with the incorporation of Costa Ria into the Alliance del Pacífico for assuming the bankruptcy of a good part of the agricultural sector are other reasons for the march.

Fabrics, banners, sound and chants were carried and sang by the demonstrators to express their demands to the deputies and above all to the Government, particularly the president, with exclamations such as Mami Chaves is furious, she wants to break the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS )- and the people don’t let him, and the one who doesn’t jump is Chaves.

Likewise, banners with phrases such as the CCSS is not broken; Stop privatization; Arrogant government, disrespects the social rule of law, removed the Board of Directors for not bowing to the interests of the Executive.

Hundreds of protesters marched along the capital’s Second Avenue from Parque de La Merced to Plaza de la Democracia, where a good number of them gathered in front of the Legislative Assembly headquarters to demand that the deputies legislate in favor of the people and workers, and not to favor the great elites.

Some representatives of the parties represented in Parliament – which is in session today to elect the new leadership for the second legislative year – came out to greet the gathering, among them all the deputies of the Broad Front faction, the largest left-wing group in Costa Rica.

For their part, the members of the Costa Rican Unitary Union and Social Bloc and the National Union of Employees of the Fund and Social Security also defended the CCSS and demanded fair wages, land for peasants and popular unity against corruption, tax evasion treasury of the great millionaires and the neoliberal model.

The National Association of Public Employees (ANEP) assured that Costa Rica became a practically unrecognizable country: totally unequal, with large sectors totally excluded from the benefits of economic growth.

Costa Rica has its salaried working class (public and private) with frozen and precarious salaries, highly indebted and with severe liquidity problems; and with a national agricultural sector on the verge of its liquidation and total extinction.

In statements to the press during the march, the president of the Costa Rican Education Workers Union, Gilbert Díaz, stated that “at a time when today in Costa Rica we are experiencing a crisis and we are very concerned that one year (from Chaves’s mandate) ) there are no solutions at all, I say to the people of Costa Rica: what have the majorities, the families, received from the policies that will favor them?

For this reason, Díaz demanded from the Government an effective, clear and true dialogue.

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