On July 25, 2017, Costa Rica's Labor Procedure Reform
(Reforma Procesal Laboral or RPL) Law No. 9343 became effective.
Despite its name, the law amended not only the procedural part of
the country's Labor Code, but also the collective bargaining
law and individual labor law governing the employer-employee
relationship—348 articles of the Labor Code in total, or
nearly half of the country's labor and employment laws.
Obtaining approval of the RPL was a long and difficult slog. In
September 2012, lawmakers approved a version of the RPL dating back
to 2000. A month later, former Costa Rica President Laura
Chinchilla vetoed the law—only to withdraw the veto in May
2013.
A year and a half later, in December 2014, current President
Luis Guillermo Solís lifted the veto. In August 2015, the
Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court declared both
Chinchilla´s withdrawal of the veto and Solís´
lifting of the veto unconstitutional. Consequently, in December
2015, the nine
