More than 1,500 dockworkers affiliated with the union SINTRAJAP went on strike for 16 days, yet the Atlantic Port Authority's (JAPDEVA) board of directors on Wednesday voted to pay them full wages for their time away from the job. In response, the Libertarian Movement Party's top lawmaker, Otto Guevara, on Thursday filed a criminal complaint alleging embezzlement against JAPDEVA’s Executive President Anne McKinley and other top officials at the agency.
The deal negotiated puts striking workers from the SINTRAJAP union back on the job Thursday morning to avoid sanctions, including docked wages, for participation in the labor action, but does not resolve the dispute.
LIMÓN – Costa Rica's Labor Minister Victor Morales announced that negotiations with the dockworkers union SINTRAJAP would be suspended until its leaders issued a public statement denouncing the burning of President Luis Guillermo Solís' image outside union headquarters in the Caribbean port of Limón on Monday. Negotiations were originally scheduled to continue at the Labor Ministry on Wednesday in San José.
Both President Luis Guillermo Solís' administration and the Atlantic Port Authority union, SINTRAJAP, dug in their heels after negotiations at Casa Presidencial ended in an impasse Thursday.
President Luis Guillermo Solís addressed the nation Sunday evening in a televised speech urging lawmakers to keep his proposed 2015 budget largely intact as a general strike by public sector unions against budget cuts loomed Monday.
Unions, socialists and other left-leaning groups called for an end to status quo economic policies at a May Day march in downtown San José. The annual parade from Central Park to the Legislative Assembly was marked with rhetoric slamming Laura Chinchilla and past administrations for ignoring the working class, while expressing hope that the incoming president, Luis Guillermo Solís, will turn to more progressive policies.
