Employer Must Pay For Firing Pregnant Employee
The Sala Segunda de la Corte Suprema de Justicia voted in the majority in favour of a woman who was fired from her job for being pregnant. The court said the company must pay the woman ¢1.068.749 colones (us$2.100), plus eight months salary and the corresponding vacation time and "aguinaldo" (Christmas bonus).

The woman had worked in a cleaning products retail outlet in the centre of Puntarenas dating back to 2003. The hours of work were Monday to Saturday from 8am to 6pm on a salary of ¢25.000 colones per week.

The woman asked her employer to be added to the Seguro Social - social security benefits that includes medical services - at the end of January 2004 because she was pregnant, providing her employer a medical certificate of her pregnancy .

The week following the request the woman was fired by her employer and she filed a labour dispute with the Juzgado de Trabajo de Puntarenas.

The employer defended the decision by telling the Juzgado de Trabajo that the woman was on a temporary basis and was was fired because her employee abandoned the job, leaving others in charge of her post. The employer also claimed not to know about the pregnancy or the receiving of a medical certificate.

The woman then had to resort to the Sala Segunda where she appealed to the court asking for her rights and to decide if there was communication of her pregnancy to her boss and refuting her employer's claim of abandoning the work place, since she was the only employee in the retail store.

The court decided for the woman, saying that an employer cannot fire an employee because they choose to exercise their political and union rights, including requesting medical benefits provided by the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (CCSS), the state social security program.