Driving Part II: Labor Action – Tico Style

During that week in March, my boss was planning to pick me up around 7:30 the second morning I was there. When he finally showed up just before 9, he commented that there was a traffic jam and so what normally would have taken 20 minutes took closer to 2 hours.

As we headed toward the plant, he explained that the problem was closer to the airport. Sure enough there were several pairs of “rogue taxis” driving side by side at about 2 miles per hour, blocking both eastbound lanes of traffic in order to impede as many tourists as possible (keep in mind it was Spring break) and thereby generate as much publicity as possible. There were plenty of police in the area – watching. This labor action was about as violent as protests get in Costa Rica and as long as the drivers only block traffic, the police pretty much leave them alone. These rogue taxis were striking because they wanted to continue to operate without government interference – that is without being licensed, which required them to pass certain driving tests and demonstrate that their vehicle met safety standards. I’m sure there was a fee to be paid as well. The rogue drivers had supported the party that lost the election, and so they were trying to make their point before the new president took office.

There are about 15,000 of the rogue drivers in Costa Rica, and the new president negotiated with 10,000 of them after she took office. Of course, the other 5000 had their noses out of joint and decided to strike a few weeks ago. The traffic jam at the airport was limited because the police managed to block off the road to the airport before the demonstrators could form their blockades.

On that day I took my usual route to work west past the airport to Coyol, where I exit the highway, loop around to the right and cross over -- on a one lane bridge. Normally at rush hour there is a policeman at either end of the bridge directing traffic, and sometimes I have to wait for a few minutes stopped in the right lane of the highway before the traffic clears. On the day of the second strike, I sat for 10 minutes before I realized that the traffic on the bridge was not moving, and worse yet, all of the riders on a bus on the bridge were disembarking. So I ventured further west to the next exit and came back the other direction, where I exited just shy of another bottleneck in the traffic set up by the unhappy gang of 5000.