Firing an Employee in Costa Rica is a Pain in the Ass

I had a friend of mine tell me this story. They owned a property management company in Guanacaste. In their office was a safe where a bit of cash was kept. And on that safe was a hidden camera.

One day he went to the safe only to find that when a count was done on the money it was missing close to $5000. After reviewing the video surveillance it was seen that an employee had gone into the safe and stolen the money.

Knowing how big a pain in the ass letting someone go is in Costa Rica, he went to his lawyer and asked what the process was for getting rid of this employee.

He had to go through at least 4 months of paperwork and money to get the right paperwork in place to let the employee go. During this entire process the employee continued to work for him but only in a limited fashion.

Finally when the paperwork was all in place he sat the employee down and let him go. Of course the employee wanted their severance which the paperwork in place allowed the owner not to have to pay.

The owner even showed the video taken of the employee stealing money which although the face and person was clear the employee continued to deny. All this to let someone go. Another business owner I knew in Jaco made an employee do tasks like wash his car and other items in order to have the employee quit…… make you think twice about hiring someone in CR.

Well the same thing goes when a government employee is corrupt.

Dismissing a corrupt public employee is far from easy. It’s a time consuming and repetitive process. The worker in question could potentially file three appeals before being seen in court.

The act of defining the dismissal of public officials, even when they were obviously involved in acts of corruption, could take years to be resolved. During that time the workers can be suspended but with pay in most cases.

Acts of corruption was the second greatest cause of dismissal from the Central Government last year, accounting for 61 of the 199 dismissals. Employers go through with the tedious process to be able to dismiss without responsibility.

It takes six months to resolve the disciplinary procedure within the institution. It then goes through four more institutions, the General Directorate of Civil Service, the Civil Service Tribunal, the Civil Service Administrative Court and the Administrative Contentious Court.