The 13,000 ICE workers, members of the Workers Internal Front union (FIT), walked out May 16 demanding that the government stick to a February accord to issue bonds for $100 million to finance needed electricity and phone projects. The Central Bank had refused to do this, arguing it would drive up inflation and interest rates.

Rejecting a government “compromise” offer of $40 million in bonds, union representatives said that the government was starving ICE of funds to set it up for sale to private investors. On June 4 a march in solidarity with the strike drew 50,000 people into the streets of San José, the capital. That same evening the government settled the dispute, pledging to issue the full amount of bonds and to refrain from any reprisals against the union.

“We will defend this agreement in the streets,” said Albino Vargas, the secretary general of the National Association of Public Employees (ANEP), which had organized support for the strikers. Workers saw the dispute as an extension of the government’s attempt to privatize the company in 2000. That threat sparked a two-week wave of strikes, demonstrations, roadblocks, and confrontations with the police throughout the country that forced the government to back off.

Two days before the massive San José march, 70,000 teachers from the National Association of Educators (ANDE) and the Costa Rican Union of Educators joined a strike by the Association of High School Teachers. The stoppage began May 23 in solidarity with the FIT workers, and in opposition to the economic policies of the Social Christian Unity Party government of President Abel Pacheco. Among other issues, teachers demanded repeal of recent changes to their pension entitlements. These “reforms” would require teachers to work for 33 years—up from 20—to qualify for a pension that has been reduced to around 63 percent of their salary.

They also protested government plans to shift the management of the education budgets to the municipalities, and cuts in funding for school cafeterias and buses. Defying government threats of firings, suspensions, withholding of wages, and other sanctions, the teachers organized numerous marches and protests. They called off the stoppage on June 28 when the government agreed to introduce legislation modifying the pension reforms, and said it would take no action against the strikers, provided that they make up the working days lost in the strike.

These union actions received widespread support from increasingly hard-pressed workers and farmers. According to Social Watch, almost one third of the population is living in poverty or very close to it.

Under pressure from the IMF and World Bank to step up payments to imperialist coffers on its $3.3 billion debt, the Costa Rican rulers have sold off state sugar and other companies, outsourced the construction of public works, and allowed health clinics to be managed by private interests.  
 
 
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