QCOSTARICA – To promote local visitation and thus reactivate tourism in the country, the Legislative Assembly, back in 2020, approved a law that moves some holidays to Mondays.
Thanks to this, during the year there will be long weekends so that people have more time to rest and can walk around the different tourist sites that the country offers.
The initiative “Transfer holidays to Mondays, in order to promote internal visits and tourism during the years 2020 to 2024” contemplates four transfers in 2020 and 2021, and two transfers in 2022, 2023 and 2024.
The holidays in Costa Rica that are moved to Monday in 2022 are:
- Independence Day Thursday, September 15. The mandatory pay holiday moves to Monday, September 19.
- Abolition of the Army, Thursday, December 1. The non-mandatory payment holiday moves to Monday, December 5
The last remaining holiday for the years is Christmas, Sunday, December 25, a mandatory pay holiday that is celebrated on the day it falls.
Not all holidays are ‘mandatory pay’ or ‘paid holiday’ that is they must be paid if worked or not. In cases where a worker chooses not to work on a mandatory pay holiday, they face no additional consequences, such as a lowering of their vacation days or reduced salary for refusing to work on the holiday.
Non-mandatory payment holidays, for example, December 1, means that the worker can take the day off but the employer is not obliged to pay the day. In other words, if you work on a non-mandatory pay holiday, you get paid the normal salary; if you don’t work, you don’t get paid.
This applies to all employers, national or international, which must grant these holidays to employees who work in Costa Rica.
